As for the young men, the young women, and the girls, the zest and pleasure of the show shone in their eyes and movements, and spread through the hall and up the crowded staircase, like a warm, contagious atmosphere. At all times, indeed, and in all countries, an aristocracy has been capable of this sheer delight in its own splendor, wealth, good looks, and accumulated treasure; whether in the Venice that Petrarch visited; or in the Rome of the Renaissance popes; in the Versailles of the Grand Monarque; or in the Florence of to-day, which still at moments of _festa_ reproduces in its midst all the costumes of the Cinque-cento.
In this English case there was less dignity than there would have been in a Latin country, and more personal beauty; less grace, perhaps, and yet a something richer and more romantic.
At the top of the stairs stood a marquis in a dress of the Italian Renaissance, a Gonzaga who had sat for Titian; beside him a fair-haired wife in the white satin and pearls of Henrietta Maria; while up the marble stairs, watched by a laughing multitude above, streamed Gainsborough girls and Reynolds women, women from the courts of Elizabeth, or Henri Quatre, of Maria Theresa, or Marie Antoinette, the figures of Holbein and Vandyck, Florentines of the Renaissance, the youths of Carpaccio, the beauties of Titian and Veronese.
"Kitty, make haste!" cried a voice in front, as Kitty began to mount the stairs. "Your quadrille is just called."
Kitty smiled and nodded, but did not hurry her pace by a second. The staircase was not so full as it had been, and she knew well as she mounted it, her slender figure drawn to its full height, her eyes flashing greeting and challenge to those in the gallery, the diamond genius on her spear glittering above her, that she held the stage, and that the play would not begin without her.
And indeed her dress, her brilliance, and her beauty let loose a hum of conversation--not always friendly.
"What is she?" "Oh, something mythological! She's in the next quadrille." "My dear, she's Diana! Look at her bow and quiver, and the moon in her hair." "Very incorrect!--she ought to have the towered crown!" "Absurd, such a little thing to attempt Diana! I'd back Actæon!"