The human animal being apt to run after bellwethers, it may be looked upon as natural that this strange conduct of a respectable matron was speedily imitated by the girls. They vowed one and all, at this end of the table, with a unanimity which looked like an epidemic, that they must be fed with spoons; and fed they were accordingly, by amorous sons of Mars, whose blood bubbled to their brains at close contact with perfumed curls; whilst their cheeks glowed, fanned by fragrant breath, and their eyes were dazzled by snowy busts thrown back, their nerves thrilled by fairy little kicks from elfin feet and pinches from pink fingers, in the course of this bringing-up by hand of grown-up bantlings. Claret and champagne assisting, it must be admitted that at this end of the table the hilarity was more joyous than genteel. My lady looked thitherward several times with frowns, for in her day men, when they worshipped Bacchus, did so when the ladies had withdrawn. Then it mattered little what jests were bandied, what coarse freedom used. But it shocked her that a sabbat such as this should take place in the presence of his Majesty's representatives, of high-born dames and dowagers, of young girls who were presumably innocent, and that her own son should set it going. 'That boy is a thorn in my side,' she reflected, with grim resentment. 'He has never brought me anything but trouble from the moment of his birth till now. I promised to reason with him, and he has declined even to hear me speak. On his own shoulders then let the burthen of the future lie.' The Countess of Glandore, stung by the humiliation which her pride was just then suffering, irritated as it was by the canker which had poisoned the maternal milk in her breast so long, almost wished, in a throb of wickedness, that her second-born might entangle himself irrevocably. Her evil monitor whispered that if he were to die or disappear, the numbing dread which had sallowed her life would be buried in his grave. So are we impelled by little puffs of wind, when we have once started in the ice-sleigh down the slippery incline hewn out like a steel ribbon, our vision blinded by snow swirls and the rapidity of transit, till with amaze we find ourselves at the bottom with a jerk, not knowing what urged us on the road. When Madam Gillin had convinced her beau that she could take no more jelly without choking, he desisted from his well-meant efforts, and the two began to converse on a pleasantly easy-going basis.