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Updated: July 10, 2025
There are a host of respectable motives always on hand for such occasions, and Cornelia might be going either from a curiosity to find out whether Bressant would return, and in order, if so, to bring her sister the latest news; or, to obtain relief from the monotony of home-life; or, to oblige Abbie, who counted upon her appearance; or, to display her ball-dress, cut after the latest New-York pattern; or, all these small matters may have been the wheels whereon rolled the invisible car, but for which they would not have existed.
She did not go to bed, but merely threw off her ball-dress and undid her hair; then she ordered me to build a fire, and she sat by the fire-place, and stared into the flames. "Do you need me any longer, mistress?" I asked, my voice failed me at the last word. Wanda shook her head.
Would not a civilisation, that draws much of its comforts and appliances from 'sweated industries, and is languidly amused by seeing men and women performers peril their lives nightly, and lose them too, for its gratification, be the better for copying David's recoil from drinking 'the blood of men that went in jeopardy of their lives'? Is there not 'blood' on many a woman's ball-dress, on many an article of luxury, on many an amusement?
The exquisite ball-dress came home one night with the little paper from "Cheapside," or the "Argyle House," bearing its value represented in high numbers; a big account was opened in those dangerous books, a necessary affliction nevertheless, where the daughters will be "fashionable" and persist in having the same indulgences as the daughters of those who have less manners by far, but who can substitute good breeding easily by an abundance of "filthy lucre."
What are you doing here? She stared at Mrs. Delville, and Mrs. Bent, realising for the first time who was the Goddess from the Machine, stared also. Then Mrs. Delville made explanation, putting on a dirty long glove and smoothing a crumpled and ill-fitting ball-dress. 'I was at the dance, an' the Doctor was tellin' me about your baby bein' so ill.
Her ball-dress still lay on the sofa, and with a sort of fierce care she arrayed herself, took the flowers in her hand, and went down, her small face carried high under its burden of hair. She could hear old Jolyon in his room as she passed. Bewildered and vexed, he was dressing. It was past ten, they would not get there till eleven; the girl was mad.
"I was thinking," he answered, "let me see! oh! yes I was thinking of that very singular case of murder. You must have seen it in the newspapers. I have long had a doubt whether I were better fitted for a barrister or a detective. I can't keep my mind off a puzzling case. You must have heard of this one the girl they found lying in her ball-dress in the middle of a wood stabbed to the heart?"
I can't bear this man! How horribly he fixed his eyes on you when he was talking that rubbish about the ball-dress!" "He was anxious to make himself understood. I know he made me think I must mind what I was about!" "Oh, nonsense! We didn't come into this wilderness to be preached to by a lay John the Baptist! He is an ill-bred fellow!"
She had an old crimson gauze skirt on, once a ball-dress, with ends of purple ribbon floating from it and fluttering in the wind; and a purple head-dress with a crimson feather. Maude, in a spirit of perversity, displayed a blue shoulder-knot, timidly offered to her by a young Oxford man who was staying there, Mr. Shute; and Anne Ashton wore the colours given her by Lord Hartledon.
It is like the early morning after a ball, when the last guests have left the house: the lights flicker in the dawn, the empty rooms want sweeping and furnishing to be fit for habitation. Yawns, weariness, satiety, drive the jaded entertainers to their resting-places. Every one knows how tawdry the ball-dress looks in the clear morning light.
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