It is not to be wondered at that those same fumes of punch floated Lady Oxford into Mr. Kelly's mind. He swaggered up St. James's Street with her ladyship consequently riding atop of his bemused fancies. It was a gay hour in St. James's, being then about half past one of the morning. Music rippled out of windows open on the night. Kelly heard the dice rattle within and the gold clink on the green cloth; lovers were whispering on the balconies; the world seemed to be going very well for those who had not their money in the Bubble, and for no one better than for Mr. Kelly. He looked about him, if by chance he might catch a glimpse of his divinity among the ladies of fashion as he watched them getting into their chairs, pushing their hoops sidelong before them, and the flambeaux flaring on their perfections. He imagined himself a Paladin rescuing her from innumerable foes. She was an angel, a sprite, a Hamadryad, in fact everything tender and immaterial. He was roused from these dreams by an illumination of more than ordinary brilliancy, and looking up saw that he had wandered to the theatre in the Haymarket. A ragged crowd of pickpockets and the like was gathered about the portico. Carriages and chairs set down in quick succession, ladies in dominoes, gentlemen in masks. Mr. Kelly remembered that it was a night of the masquerades; all the world would be gathered in the theatre, and why not Lady Oxford, who was herself the better half of it? Kelly had a ticket in his pocket, pushed through the loiterers, and stood on the inner rim of the crowd watching the masqueraders arrive. Every carriage that drew up surely concealed her ladyship, every domino that passed up the steps hid her incomparable figure. Mr. Kelly had staked his soul with unruffled confidence upon her identity with each of the first twelve women who thus descended before he realised that he was not the only one who waited. From the spot where he stood he could see into the lobby of the theatre. Heidegger, M. le surintendant des plaisirs du Roi de l'Angleterre, 'With a hundred deep wrinkles impressed on his front, Like a map with a great many rivers upon 't,'