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Cornelia was too much entranced by the new idea to have any notion of what he was talking about; she was already hundreds of miles away, living in stately houses, driving in magnificent carriages, sweeping in gorgeous silks and laces through gilded and illuminated ballrooms, and listening to courtly compliments from handsome and immaculate gentlemen.
"I see you apprehend some part of my reasons for purchasing the balloon. 'Shopping' is an amusement so gratifying to all women on Earth, from the veiled favourites of an Eastern seraglio to the very unveiled dames of Western ballrooms, that I suppose the instinct must be native to the sex wherever women and trade co-exist.
After a roaring season in town, we had, all five Berry, Daphne, Jonah, Jill, and myself girded our jaded loins, packed, crawled into the car, and rolled down to Cornwall, there to build up the wasted tissues, go to bed at ten, and forget that there were such things as theatres and ballrooms. We took a couple of days coming down by road, and our run was not without incident.
Better to be a prisoner in the Bastille, better to be a recluse at La Trappe, than to be generalissimo of the half naked savages who burrowed in the dreary swamps of Munster. Any plea was welcome which would serve as an excuse for returning from that miserable exile to the land of cornfields and vineyards, of gilded coaches and laced cravats, of ballrooms and theatres,
Observe her in a ballroom that is overheated in the corners and draughty near the windows, as all ballrooms are. Her neck and her throat, her bosom and arms are bare. Her frock is of the filmiest gossamer stuff; her slippers are paper thin, her stockings the sheerest of textures, yet she doesn't sniff and her nose doesn't turn red and the skin upon her exposed shoulders refuses to goose-flesh.
People drove, visited the springs in a vain expectation that excessive drinking of the medicated waters would counteract the effect of excessive gormandizing at the hotels sat about in the endless rows of armchairs on the piazzas, crowded the heavily upholstered parlors, promenaded in the corridors, listened to the music in the morning, and again in the afternoon, and thronged the stairways and passages, and blocked up the entrance to the ballrooms.
Kedzie led Dyckman to a chair and took the next one to it. Ferriday beamed on them and switched on the dark. Then, as if by a divine miracle, the screen at the end of the room became a world of life and light. People were there, and places. Mountains were swung into view and removed. Palaces were decreed and annulled. Fields blossomed with flowers; ballrooms swirled; streets seethed.
Those elderly ladies, who sit on the edge of ballrooms sampling the stuff of humanity between finger and thumb and breathing so evenly that the necklaces, which rise and fall upon their breasts, seem to represent some elemental force, such as the waves upon the ocean of humanity, concluded, a little smilingly, that she would do.
Well, Cousin Hugh, to take you into our entire confidence, we have been facing things and have arrived at several conclusions, one of which is now, Ella, shut your ears that you have one of the best daughters in the world, and that she and Mara have quite broken the ice between them and are going to be very good friends, and I was saying how I would like to convoy two such girls in one of our ballrooms in the good old times oh, well, we have just been having a long lingo as girls will when they get together."
Once married, the more aspiring of them have no real scope for ambition: the ambition gnaws away their content, and never find elsewhere wherewithal to feed on. This was Constance's especial misfortune. Her lofty, and restless, and soaring spirit pined for a sphere of action, and ballrooms and boudoirs met it on every side.
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