ell
the truth, swallowed a good bit of the mess-room poker, which made it as
impossible for Major Hoskyns to descend to an ungentlemanlike word or
action as to brush his own trousers below the knee.

Captain Dolignan told this gentleman his story in gleeful accents; but
Major Hoskyns heard him coldly, and as coldly answered that he had known
a man to lose his life for the same thing.

"That is nothing," continued the Major, "but unfortunately he deserved
to lose it."

At this, blood mounted to the younger man's temples; and his senior
added, "I mean to say he was thirty-five; you, I presume, are
twenty-one!"

"Twenty-five."

"That is much the same thing; will you be advised by me?"

"If you will advise me."

"Speak to no one of this, and send White the L3, that he may think you
have lost the bet."

"That is hard, when I won it."

"Do it, for all that, sir."

Let the disbelievers in human perfectibility know that this dragoon
capable of a blush did this virtuous action, albeit with violent
reluctance; and this was his first damper. A week after these events he
was at a ball. He was in that state of factitious discontent which
belongs to us amiable English. He was looking in vain for a lady, equal
in personal attraction to the idea he had formed of George Dolignan as
a man, when suddenly there glided past him a most delightful vision! a
lady whose beauty and symmetry took him by the eyes,--another look: "It
can't be! Yes, it is!" Miss Haythorn! (not that he knew her name!) but
what an apotheosis!

The duck had become a peahen--radiant, dazzling, she looked twice as
beautiful and almost twice as large as before. He lost sight of her. He
found her again. She was so lovely she made him ill--and he, alone, must
not dance with her, speak to her. If he had been content to begin her
acquaintance the usual way, it might have ended in kissing: it must end
in nothing. As she danced, sparks of beauty fell from her on all around,
but him--she did not see him; it was clear she never would see him--one
gentleman was particularly assiduous; she smiled on his assiduity; he
was ugly, but she smiled on him. Dolignan was surprised at his success,
his ill taste, his ugliness, his impertinence. Dolignan at last found
himself injured; "who was this man? and what right had he to go on so?
He never kissed her, I suppose," said Dolle. Dolignan could not prove
it, but he felt that somehow the rights of property were invaded. He
wen