ABSTRACT
THE ball so anxiously expected was over. Caroline, who had formed a very different idea of an assembly of that sort in the country, had been surprised to see a great number of fashionable people, as well as many who thought themselves so; and that, far from being considered as something extraordinary, from the style of life she had formerly been in, and her reputed accomplishments, nobody seemed particularly to think about her. She piqued herself extremely on the superiority of her dancing, having been taught many years by the most fashionable masters; but she had the mortification of observing, that the nymphs of the country town, who had received only a few lessons from an itinerant master, that travels the country in ‘a chaise and one,’d94 thought themselves quite as expert, and, for aught she could see, were quite as much applauded. Caroline, however, endeavoured to conceal her disappointment; but her aunt, who had watched her narrowly the whole evening, had not failed to observe it. When they met the next morning at breakfast, the people they had seen the night before were, of course, the subject of their discourse; and when Mrs. Woodfield came down, she found her niece and her eldest daughter talking very earnestly, 37allowing some to be tolerable, but declaring that some were odious, and others absolutely horrible. This conversation she did not check as she entered; and, after a momentary silence, Caroline was too full of the occurrences of the ball not to renew it.
