The ladies complained that they could not recognize more than fifty people.

Where did all this crowd spring from?
Young girls with low necks were making a great display of their shoulders.

A woman had a golden dagger stuck in her chignon, while a bodice thickly embroidered with jet beads clothed her in what looked like a coat of mail.

People's eyes kept following another lady smilingly, so singularly marked were her clinging skirts.

All the luxuriant splendor of the departing winter was there--the overtolerant world of pleasure, the scratch gathering a hostess can get together after a first introduction, the sort of society, in fact, in which great names and great shames jostle together in the same fierce quest of enjoyment.