A coruscation of bright eyes and beauteous forms shed a halo of delight around, that must have warmed the cyprian's ball ~41~~the heart and animated the pulse of the coldest stoic in Christendom. The specious M. C, General O'M***a, introduced us in his best style, quickly bowing each of us into the graces of some fascinating fair, than whom "Not Cleopatra on her galley's deck Display'd so much of leg or more of neck." For myself, I had the special honour of being engaged to the Honourable Mrs. J-- C******y, otherwise Padden, who, whatever may have been her origin,{2} has certainly acquired the ease and elegance of 2 Mrs. Padden is said to have been originally a servant-maid at Plymouth, and the victim of early seduction. When very young, coming to London with her infant in search of a Captain D----- in the D--------e Militia, her first but inconstant swain, chance threw her in her abandoned condition into the way of Colonel C-----, who was much interested by her tale of sorrow, and more perhaps by her then lovely person, to obtain possession of which, he took a house for her, furnished it, and (as the phrase is) _set her up_. How long the duke's _aide-de-camp_ continued the favourite lover is not of any consequence; but both parties are known to have been capricious in _affaires de cour_. Her next acknowledged protector was the light-hearted George D-----d, then a great gun in the fashionable world: to him succeeded an _amorous thane_, the Irish Earl of F-----e; and when his lordship, satiated by possession, withdrew his eccentric countenance, Lord Mo--f--d succeeded to the vacant couch. The Venetian masquerade is said to have produced a long carnival to this _belle brunette_, who seldom kept _Lent_; and who hero met, for the first time, a now noble Marquess, then Lord Y--------, to whose liberality she was for some time indebted for a very splendid establishment; but the precarious existence of such connexions is proverbial, and Mrs. Padden has certainly had her share of fatal experience. Her next paramour was a diamond of the first water, but no star, a certain dashing jeweller, Mr. C-----, whose charmer she continued only until kind fortune threw in her way her present constant Jack. With the hoy-day of the blood, the fickleness of the heart ceases; and Mrs. Padden is now in the "sear o' the leaf," and somewhat _passee_ with the town. It does therefore display good judgment in the lady to endeavour, by every attention and correct conduct, to preserve an attachment that has now existed for some considerable time. ~42~~Indeed it is hardly possible to find a more conversational or attractive woman, or one less free from the vulgarity which usually accompanies ladies of her caste. With this fair I danced a waltz, and then danced off to my friend Crony, who had been excused a display of agility on the score of age, and from whom I anticipated some interesting anecdotes of the surrounding stars.