She talked to Mrs. D. about London fashionable life, just as if they had both been going out together for the last three or four seasons; ay, and stranger still, without even once puzzling her, or making her feel astray in the geography of this _terra incognita_. I conclude she was equally successful with the girls; and though she scarcely addressed a word to James, I suppose she must have made up for it by a look, for he has never ceased raving of her since. I have n't told you how she "landed" me, for I 'm not above confessing that I was as bad as the rest; but the truth is, Tom, I don't really know how I was caught. I am too old for these blandishments; they no more suit me now than a tight boot or a runaway hack; one gets too rheumatic and too stiff in the joints for homage after fifty; and besides that, there's a kind of croaking conscience that whispers, "Don't be making a fool of yourself, Kenny James!" and, between you and me, Tom, 't is well for us when we 're not too deaf to hear it. Besides this; Tom, it is only the fellows that never were in love when they were young that become irretrievably entangled in after life. If you want to see a true sexagenarian victim, look out for some hang-dog, downcast, mopish creature, or some suspectful, wary, crafty, red-haired rascal, that thought every woman had a trap laid for him. These are your hopeless cases; these are the men that always die in some mysterious manner, and leave wills behind them to be litigated for half a century. The Kenny Dodds of this world come into another category. They knew that love and the measles are mildest in young constitutions, and so they began early. Maybe it was in a firm reliance on this that I felt so easy about the widow,--if widow she be; for, to tell the truth, I don't yet know if Mr. Gore Hampton be to the fore or only has left her a memory of his virtues. I leave you to guess what impression she made upon me; for the more I go on trying to explain and refine upon it the less intelligible do I become. One thing, however, I must say,--these charming women are the ruin of Irishmen! Our own fair creatures, with a great share of good looks, and far more than ordinary agreeability, are not so dangerous as the English, and for this reason: in their demands for admiration they are too general; they--so to say--fire at the whole covey; now, your Englishwoman marks her bird,' and never goes home till she bags it! We were to have left Cologne that morning for Bonn, but so agreeably did the time pass, that we did n't start till evening, and even then it was quite tearing ourselves away; for the delightful widow--for widow I must call her till she shows cause to the contrary--hourly gained on us.