Now, it will be understood, this unfortunate youth was fairly in the grip of that demoralising but evasive demon that is the sworn foe to philosophy. He was entered of the amorous germ; and the procreative atom, multiplying, was with amazing quickness to convert to misuse all the sound humours of his constitution. He could not seek to exercise a normal faculty, but it confused and routed what he had always recognised for the plain logic of existence. He was ready to discount facts; to magnify trifles; to attach an unwarranted significance to specious vacuities; to fathom a deep meaning with the very plumb he used for the sounding of a shallow artifice. Sometimes, in a recrudescence of reason, he would think, like any calm-souled rationalist, to analyse his own symptoms, to annotate the course of his disease for the benefit of future victims to a like morbosity. It was of no use. His moral vision was so out of focus as to distort to him not only his present condition, but all the processes that had conduced thereto. He was humiliated; and he writhed under, and gloried in, his humiliation. To him, as to many in like circumstance, it seemed preposterous that he should have come unscathed through many battles to be outfenced by a child with a sword of lath. So feels the warrior of a hundred fights when he is “run in” by a street constable for brawling. Ned dressed for the ball with particular care. He was to constitute himself of madame’s party, and for that purpose had engaged to dine with it before the event. The meal was a desultory one, the ladies’ toilettes serving as excuse for an unpunctuality that was generally opposed to the principles of la gouvernante. But, one by one, all took their places at the table--Mademoiselle d’Orléans, in a fine-powdered head-dress, having a single feather in it like a cockade, and with her little plaintive rabbit eyes looking from a soft mist of fur; Pamela, sweet and roguish, wearing her own brown curls filleted with a double ribbon of yellow; and Mademoiselle Sercey, another young relative of madame’s, and an inconsiderable item of the household at Bury. There were also accommodated with places three or four of the Bœotians before referred to--silent, awkward men, painfully conscious of their quasi-elevation, who sat below the salt and talked together in whispers. Mr Sheridan came in late. He had compromised with his grief so far as to exchange his black stockings for white, and to wear a diamond brooch in his breast linen. His hair was powdered and tied into a black ribbon. Ned must acknowledge to himself that he looked a very engaging gentleman. He sparkled with fun and frolic, and he fed the sparkle liberally from the long glass that stood beside him. “Mademoiselle,” he said to the princess, “your hair is very pretty. Love hath nested in it, and is hidden all but his wing. But is it not ill-manners to keep him whispering into your ear in company?”