profited by the port I had drunk as an encouragement to my entree, and lounging up in the most modish way possible, I reminded her ladyship of an introduction with which I said I had once been honoured at the Duke of Dashwell's, and requested her hand for the next cotillion. Oh, Paul, fancy my triumph! The old damsel said, with a sigh, she remembered me very well, ha, ha, ha!--and I carried her off to the cotillion like another Theseus bearing away a second Ariadne. Not to be prolix on this part of my life, I went night after night to balls and routs, for admission to which half the fine gentlemen in London would have given their ears. And I improved my time so well with Lady Margaret, who was her own mistress and had L5,000,--a devilish bad portion for some, but not to be laughed at by me,--that I began to think when the happy day should be fixed. Meanwhile, as Lady Margaret introduced me to some of her friends, and my lodgings were in a good situation, I had been honoured with some real invitations. The only two questions I ever was asked were (carelessly), "Was I the only son?" and on my veritable answer 'Yes!' 'What' (this was more warmly put),--'what was my county?' Luckily my county was a wide one,--Yorkshire; and any of its inhabitants whom the fair interrogators might have questioned about me could only have answered, I was not in their part of it. "Well, Paul, I grew so bold by success that the devil one day put it into my head to go to a great dinner-party at the Duke of Dashwell's. I went, dined,--nothing happened; I came away, and the next morning I read in the papers,-- "'Mysterious affair--person lately going about--first bouses--most fashionable parties--nobody knows--Duke of Dashwell's yesterday. Duke not like to make disturbance--as royalty present."