In two days after Lady Campion’s _popping-jay_, we were forced by my uncle to attend an evening party at Lady Neville’s. It is not more than two months since she has lost a beautiful and accomplished daughter, who died of decline. If _my_ beloved mother had hung over the dying couch of a child, would _she_----but I must curb myself, and _relate_ facts, not _comment_ upon them, or I shall never have done. Till ten o’clock at night we did not go to Neville Court, though the cards particularly notified “an early party;” and when we reached that splendid mansion, we found an immense assemblage of the _beau monde_, greater than it was possible to suppose could be mustered at such a distance from London which is the focus of all fashionable rays, a few of which only are scattered and refracted by various accidents in certain individual families, as cracks in a glass will disturb the transmission of the sun’s beams. _Here_ was another _lie direct_, for the cards also informed us, that the party was to be a “_small_” one. Why this perversion of language? I cannot fathom it. If some lurking remnant of compunctious feeling crossed the heart of Lady Neville; and in the words “small” and “early” she discovered a slight palliation of the offence against decency (for I will not profane the sweet idea of maternal love by using its language in _such_ company), which she had determined on committing, I should perceive the reason of the strange deception of which I am speaking, but all was gaiety and glitter. Lady Neville and her daughters sparkled with diamonds arranged upon a sort of gossamer drapery, so light, so graceful, so artificially adjusted, fashionable and becoming, that mourning was the last sentiment which such paraphernalia could excite or indicate. Their dress told lies as well as their cards.