maddened and confused excitement. Time and space
are nothing to a man thus enlightened, and so they appeared to me; scarcely
a second had elapsed when I found myself standing in the Dalrymples'
drawing-room.

If a few hours had done much to metamorphose _me_, certes, they had done
something for my fair friends also; anything more unlike what they appeared
in the morning can scarcely be imagined. Matilda in black, with her hair in
heavy madonna bands upon her fair cheek, now paler even than usual, never
seemed so handsome; while Fanny, in a light-blue dress, with blue flowers
in her hair, and a blue sash, looked the most lovely piece of coquetry ever
man set his eyes upon. The old major, too, was smartened up, and put into
an old regimental coat that he had worn during the siege of Gibraltar; and
lastly, Mrs. Dalrymple herself was attired in a very imposing costume that
made her, to my not over-accurate judgment, look very like an elderly
bishop in a flame-colored cassock. Sparks was the only stranger, and
wore upon his countenance, as I entered, a look of very considerable
embarrassment that even my thick-sightedness could not fail of detecting.

_Parlez-moi de l'amitie_, my friends. Talk to me of the warm embrace of
your earliest friend, after years of absence; the cordial and heartfelt
shake hands of your old school companion, when in after years, a chance
meeting has brought you together, and you have had time and opportunity for
becoming distinguished and in repute, and are rather a good hit to be known
to than otherwise; of the close grip you give your second when he comes up
to say, that the gentleman with the loaded detonator opposite won't fire,
that he feels he's in the wrong. Any or all of these together, very
effective and powerful though they be, are light in the balance when
compared with the two-handed compression you receive from the gentleman
that expects you to marry one of his daughters.

"My dear O'Malley, how goes it? Thought you'd never come," said he, still
holding me fast and looking me full in the face, to calculate the extent to
which my potations rendered his flattery feasible.

"Hurried to death with preparations, I suppose," said Mrs. Dalrymple,
smiling blandly. "Fanny dear, some tea for him."

"Oh, Mamma, he does not like all that sugar; surely not," said she, looking
up with a most sweet expression, as though to say, "I at least know his
tastes."

"I believed you were going without se