“Then champagne for the _coup-de-grace_. Nothing like your _vin mousseux_ for a critical moment,--every bubble that rises sparkling to the surface prompts some bright thought, or elicits some brilliant idea, that would only have been drowned in your more sober fluids. Here’s to the girl you love, whoever she be.” “To her bright eyes, then, be it,” said I, clearing off a brimming goblet of nearly half the bottle, while my friend Power seemed multiplied into any given number of gentlemen standing amidst something like a glass manufactory of decanters. “I hope you feel steady enough for this business,” said my friend, examining me closely with the candle. “I’m an archdeacon,” muttered I, with one eye involuntarily closing. “You’ll not let them double on you!” “Trust me, old boy,” said I, endeavoring to look knowing. “I think you’ll do,” said he, “so now march. I’ll wait for you here, and we’ll go on board together; for old Bloater the skipper says he’ll certainly weigh by daybreak.” “Till then,” said I, as opening the door, I proceeded very cautiously to descend the stairs, affecting all the time considerable _nonchalance_, and endeavoring, as well as my thickened utterance would permit, to hum:-- “Oh, love is the soul of an Irish dragoon.” If I was not in the most perfect possession of my faculties in the house, the change to the open air certainly but little contributed to their restoration; and I scarcely felt myself in the street when my brain became absolutely one whirl of 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.