on the part of my acquaintances to persuade me to
dance again. Of course, all the dancing characters among our party were
Clara's partners in succession; and both Gordon and Dawson, who came to
ask what had put me into the sulks, were loud in their encomiums on her
beauty and fascination; even Branling, no very devoted admirer of the
sex (he saw too much of them, he said, having four presentable sisters),
allowed that she was "the right sort of girl;" but it was not until I
saw her stand up with Willingham, and marked his evident admiration of
her, and heard the remarks freely made around me, that they were the
handsomest couple in the room, that I felt a twinge of what I would
hardly allow to myself was jealousy: when, however, after the dance,
they passed me in laughing conversation, evidently in high good-humour
with each other, and too much occupied to notice any one else, I
began to wonder I had never before found out what a conceited puppy
Willingham was, and set down poor Clara as an arrant flirt. But I was in
a variable mood, it seemed, and a feather--or, what some may say is even
lighter, a woman's word--was enough to turn me. So when I found myself,
by some irresistible attraction, drawn next to her again at supper, and
heard her sweet voice, and saw what I interpreted into a smile of
welcome, as she made room for me beside her, I forgave her all past
offences, and was perfectly happy for the next hour; nay, even
condescended to challenge Willingham to a glass of _soi-disant_
champagne. The Tiger, who was, according to annual custom, displaying
the tarnished uniform of the 3d Madras N.I., and illustrating his
tremendous stories of the siege of Overabad, or some such place, by
attacks on all the edibles in his neighbourhood, gave me a look of
intelligence as he requested I would "do him the honour," and shook his
whiskers with some meaning which I did not think it necessary to inquire
into. What was it to him if I chose to confine my attentions to my
undoubtedly pretty neighbour? No one could dispute my taste, at all
events; for Clara Phillips was a universal favourite, though I had
remarked that none of the numerous "eligible young men" in the room
appeared about her in the character of a dangler. She was engaged to
Willingham for the waltz next after supper, and I felt queerish again,
till she willingly agreed to dance the next set with me, on condition
that I would oblige her so far as to ask a friend of hers