d pleasure of going down the country-dance
with your Ladyship?"

An immense heave of her Ladyship's ample chest was perceptible. Yards of
blond lace, which might be compared to a foam of the sea, were agitated
at the same moment, and by the same mighty emotion. The river of
diamonds which flowed round her Ladyship's neck, seemed to swell and to
shine more than ever. The tall plumes on her ambrosial head bowed down
beneath the storm. In other words, Lady Gorgon, in a furious rage,
which she was compelled to restrain, trembled, drew up, and bowing
majestically, said,--

"Sir, I shall have much pleasure." With this, she extended her hand.
Scully, trembling, thrust forward one of his huge kid-gloves, and led
her to the head of the country-dance. John Perkins--who I presume
had been drinking pretty freely, so as to have forgotten his ordinary
bashfulness--looked at the three Gorgons in blue, then at the pretty
smiling one in white, and stepping up to her, without the smallest
hesitation, asked her if she would dance with him.

The young lady smilingly agreed. The great example of Scully and Lady
Gorgon was followed by all dancing men and women. Political enmities
were forgotten. Whig voters invited Tory voters' wives to the dance. The
daughters of Reform accepted the hands of the sons of Conservatism. The
reconciliation of the Romans and Sabines was not more touching than this
sweet fusion. Whack--whack! Springer clapped his hands; and the fiddlers
adroitly obeying the cheerful signal, began playing "Sir Roger de
Coverley" louder than ever.

I do not know by what extraordinary charm (nescio qua praeter solitum,
etc.), but young Perkins, who all his life had hated country-dances, was
delighted with this one, and skipped and laughed, poussetting, crossing,
down-the-middling, with his merry little partner, till every one of the
bettermost sort of the thirty-nine couples had dropped panting away, and
till the youngest Miss Gorgon, coming up to his partner, said in a loud
hissing scornful whisper, "Lucy, Mamma thinks you have danced quite
enough with this--this person." And Lucy, blushing, starting back, and
looking at Perkins in a very melancholy way, made him a little curtsey,
and went off to the Gorgonian party with her cousin. Perkins was too
frightened to lead her back to her place--too frightened at first, and
then too angry. "Person!" said he: his soul swelled with a desperate
republicanism: he went back to his patron