of the play: and he thought with such rage of the
humiliation to which she had subjected him, that he began to fancy he
was jealous and in love with her still. But that illusion did not last
very long. He ran round to the stage-door of the theatre to see her if
possible, but he did not succeed. She passed indeed under his nose with
a female companion, but he did not know her,--nor did she recognise
him. The next night he came in late, and stayed very quietly for the
afterpiece, and on the third and last night of his stay in London--why,
Taglioni was going to dance at the Opera,--Taglioni! and there was to
be Don Giovanni, which he admired of all things in the world: so Mr. Pen
went to Don Giovanni and Taglioni.

This time the illusion about her was quite gone. She was not less
handsome, but she was not the same, somehow. The light was gone out of
her eyes which used to flash there, or Pen's no longer were dazzled
by it. The rich voice spoke as of old, yet it did not make Pen's bosom
thrill as formerly. He thought he could recognise the brogue underneath:
the accents seemed to him coarse and false. It annoyed him to hear the
same emphasis on the same words, only uttered a little louder: worse
than this, it annoyed him to think that he should ever have mistaken
that loud imitation for genius, or melted at those mechanical sobs and
sighs. He felt that it was in another life almost, that it was another
man who had so madly loved her. He was ashamed and bitterly humiliated,
and very lonely. Ah, poor Pen! the delusion is better than the truth
sometimes, and fine dreams than dismal waking.

They went and had an uproarious supper that night, and Mr. Pen had a
fine headache the next morning, with which he went back to Oxbridge,
having spent all his ready money.

As all this narrative is taken from Pen's own confessions, so that
the reader may be assured of the truth of every word of it, and as Pen
himself never had any accurate notion of the manner in which he spent
his money, and plunged himself in much deeper pecuniary difficulties,
during his luckless residence at Oxbridge University, it is, of course,
impossible for me to give any accurate account of his involvements,
beyond that general notion of his way of life, which has been sketched
a few pages back. He does not speak too hardly of the roguery of the
university tradesmen, or of those in London whom he honoured with his
patronage at the outset of his career. Even Finc