The highest rank, the greatest talent, the loveliest of beauty's daughters, the manliest and noblest of her sons, were all assembled in that flood of light which every apartment might be termed.

Yet could the varied countenances of these noble crowds have clearly marked the character within, what a strange and varied page in the book of human life might that ball have unfolded.
But various as are the characters that compose an assemblage such as this, the tone is generally given by the character and manner of the lady of the house, and her Grace the Duchess of Rothbury was admirably fitted for the position she filled.

A daughter of fashion, bred up from her earliest years in scenes of luxury and pomp, she had yet escaped the selfishness, the artificial graces, which are there generally predominant.

She had married early in life, a marriage _a la mode_, that is to say, not of love, but of interest on the part of her parents, and on her own, dazzled, perhaps, by the exalted rank of the man who had made her an offer of his hand.

They were happy.