Page:The Romance of Isabel, Lady Burton.djvu/58

32 capering in a quadrille the steps that were danced in Noah's ark; the rouged old peeress, whom you would not have taken to be respectable if you did not happen to know her, flirting with boys. I saw other old ones, with one foot in the grave, almost mad with excitement over cards and dice, and every passion, except love, gleaming from their horrid eyes. I saw the rivalry amongst the beauties. I noted the brainless coxcomb, who comes in for an hour, leans against the door, twirls his moustache, and goes out again—a sort of "Aw! the Tenth-don't-dance-young-man!"; the boy who asks all the prettiest girls to dance, steps on their toes, tears their dresses, and throws them down; the confirmed, bad, intriguing London girl, who will play any game for her end; and the timid, delighted young girl, who finds herself of consequence for the first time. I have watched the victim of the heartless coquette—the young girl gazing with tearful, longing eyes for the man to ask her to dance to whom she has perhaps unconsciously betrayed her affection; she in her innocence like a pane of glass, the other glorying in her torture, dancing or flirting with the man in her sight, only to glut her vanity with another's disappointment. I have watched the jealousy of men to each other, vying for a woman's favour and cutting each other out. I have heard mothers running down each other's daughters, dowagers and prudent spinsters casting their eyes to heaven for vengeance on the change of manners—even in the Forties!—on the licence of the day, and the liberty of the age! I have heard them sighing for minuets and pigtails, for I