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At nine o'clock on the following evening, Ponsonby entered the room, an altered man. He was one of the very few persons I have met with in my life, who, from the natural extreme reserve and shyness of their disposition, absolutely required to be a very little tipsy before they can give their brilliant imaginations fair play. Ponsonby had slept, drunk a little more claret, and, what lately had been unusual to him owing to his father's lingering illness, had put on an evening dress. He appeared now so much more beautiful than I had ever imagined any mortal mixture of earth's clay, that I began to lose my confidence in myself and tremble. There was too a look of success about him, for indeed the humblest man on earth must have borrowed courage from the reflection of Ponsonby's looking-glass on that evening: and there he sat for half an hour, laughing and showing his brilliant teeth, while he related to me many witty things which had been said by his uncle, whom he had just left—the George Ponsonby, now no more, who spoke so well on the Opposition side.

"Can one endure this any longer," thought I. I was getting into a fever. "Perhaps he does not love me!"

"You are so proud of being dressed to-night!" I remarked with some drollery, and I thought he never would have ceased laughing at me.

It was very tiresome.

"The fact is," said Ponsonby, in his sweet voice, the beauteous tones of which nobody ever did or will dispute, "the fact is, I really am proud of it; for I have not worn shoes before for these last three months; but," added he, "do you know what I am most proud of in the world, and which, poor as I am, upon my honour, I would not exchange, at this moment, for a hundred thousand pounds?"

"No!—-"

"I will tell you—my place in your heart and your arms this evening." He put his arms round my waist, and my lips were nearly touching his. Ponsonby's cheek was now tinged with the glowing blush of passion; yet he turned from my kiss like a spoiled child.

"No!" said Ponsonby, shaking his head, "I have a thousand things to tell you."

"I cannot listen to one of them," said I, faintly, and our lips met in one long, long delicious kiss! so sweet, so ardent! that it seemed to draw the life's warm current from my youthful heart to reanimate his with all its wildest passion.

And then!—yes, and then, as Sterne, says—and then we parted.

The next day, at past three o'clock, Fanny found me in bed.

"How abominably idle!" said Fanny.

I answered that I was not well.

"You do not look very bad," Fanny replied; "on the contrary, I have not seen you look so well, nor your eyes so bright, for some time."

"Well," said I, "if you really think me out of danger, I will get up."

"Come!" answered Fanny, "shall I ring for your maid? I want you to take me to Julia's."

While I was dressing, Fanny informed me that she had given up her own house to go and live with Julia.

"I rather prefer living alone," she continued, "but Julia is so very dull, and my paying half her rent will also be of service to her."

"And some of your beaux may perhaps be brought to flirt with her, poor thing!" added I, "for really their neglect is very hard upon her."

Much more beauty, it should seem, is required to please without virtue than with it, since, it is said, that Julia at her mamma's made conquests every where and every hour. Even the Regent himself once said he would travel a hundred miles to have the pleasure of seeing her dance.

Her dancing, we both agreed, was perfection: speaking of what was most truly graceful, effeminate and ladylike.

"Brummell has been with her, making strong love lately," said Fanny.

"Oh, the shocking deceiver! Tell Julia not to believe one word he says."

I inquired how Amy and Sydenham went on.

"Pretty well," answered Fanny. "Sydenham is not only a very good-natured, but a remarkably clever, and well-bred man. Amy tries his patience too, a little, with his passion for books; she is always taking them out of his hand, and making him look at her attitudes before the glass, or her attempts at the shawl-dance."

"What does Sydenham do for the Marquis of Wellesley?" I asked.

"Everything, I believe," Fanny replied. "He appears to write all his letters and papers, in the shape of business; and so I believe he did in India; but I know that Wellesley does nothing except by his advice."

"Pray does Lord Wellesley make his love too, as well as his reputation, by proxy?"

"I do not know," answered Fanny, laughing, "although, I believe he passed a good deal of his time formerly with the lady they call Mrs. Moll Raffles," as Fanny designated her in her zeal to be civil.

"I never saw anybody in such spirits as you to-day," Fanny remarked to me, when we got into the carriage. "I am afraid there is some mischief in the wind. What has become of Lord Ponsonby?"

I was too happy to talk about it, so I contrived to change the subject. "Where shall I take you to?" I inquired.

"To Julia's, where I am now settled. I went there yesterday," was Fanny's answer.

"This world is really made to be laughed at," said Fanny, suddenly leaning her head out of the carriage window.

"What is the matter?" I asked.

"That man," said Fanny, "with his grave face and his large board, hoisted up, standing there, challenging the world, as if he were Don Quixote come to life again."

"What for?" said I.

"Bayley's Blacking. Can one conceive anything so absurd?"

I set her down as desired, and begged her to make my excuse to Julia, who was at her window with Horace Beckford, the handsome nephew of Lord Rivers. He appeared inclined to pay her attention, if one might judge by the soft smile which was playing about his features: but then he was eternally smiling.

I found my very constant and steady admirer, Lord Frederick Bentinck, waiting for me, prepared, as usual, to give me a world of advice. He told me that I was going on in a very bad way, and asked me whither I expected to go?

"Where are you going to?" said I, as he walked into my dressing-room, and seemed to admire himself in my large glass.

"I am going to see the Duchess of York," said Fred Bentinck.

"What of that!" I returned. "Where are your gloves?"

"I never wear them, unless at court; but I have got on a new pair of leather breeches to-day, and I want to see now they fit by your glass."

Brummell at this moment was announced.

"How very apropos you are arrived," I remarked. "Lord Frederick wants your opinion on his new leather breeches."

"Come here, Fred Bentinck!" said Brummell. "But there is only one man on earth who can make leather breeches!"

"Mine were made by a man in the Haymarket," Bentinck observed, looking down at them with much pride; for he very seldom sported anything new.

"My dear fellow, take them off directly!" said Brummell.

"I beg I may hear of no such thing," said I, hastily—"else, where would he go to, I wonder, without his small-clothes?"

"You will drive me out of the house, Harriette," said Fred Bentinck; and then put himself into attitudes, looking anxiously and very innocently, from George Brummell to his leather breeches, and from his leather breeches to the looking-glass.

"They only came home this morning," proceeded Fred, "and I thought they were rather neat."

"Bad knees, my good fellow! bad knees!" said Brummell, shrugging up his shoulders.

"They will do very well," I remarked. "Fred Bentinck do start a new subject, for first with my latter end and then with your own, this is quite worn out."

"I am sorry," said Fred Bentinck, "very sorry to say that I am afraid you will turn out bad."

"What do you call bad?"

"Why profligate! and wicked."

"Oh! you don't say so? what do you mean by wicked?"

"Why—why, in short," continued Frederick—"in short, shall I drive you down to Greenwich to dinner?"

"And suppose I should grow wicked on the road?" said I.

"Do you know what the Duke of York says of you Fred?" said Brummell.

"The Duke of York talks in a very nasty way," said Fred Bentinck, "I—I, for my part, hate all immodest conversation."

"And that is the reason why I save up all the odd stories I can learn, for you and for you only," I observed. "And yet you come here every day?"

"As to you," said Fred, "you are a beautiful creature, and I come to try to reform you, or else what will become of you when you grow old?"

"Age cannot wither me, nor custom stale my infinite variety:" was my reply.

"You are mad!" said Fred Bentinck.

"And you are monstrous top-heavy! and madness being often light-headedness, I wish you would go mad too."

"Apropos, Mr. Brummell," said I turning to him. "I have never yet had time to acknowledge your effusion; and I have the less regret on that score, because I learned from Fanny to-day that you are false-hearted."

"Julia and I," said Brummell, "are very old friends, you know."

"True," said I, "which, I suppose, accounts for her preference of Horace Beckford."

Brummell's pride appeared to take alarm as he inquired if Julia really admired Horace.

"I know nothing whatever about it," answered I, "except that I saw them both at the window together to-day."

Brummell seized his hat.

"Take Fred Bentinck with you," said I.

"Come Fred," said Brummell; "but you have not heard what the Duke of York says of you."

"I can guess," replied Fred, trying to make his goodnatured face severe and cross.

"Oh! he has accused you to your face, I see," reiterated Brummell.

"So much the better," said Fred Bentinck, "a man cannot be too virtuous."

"Talking of virtue," I remarked to Fred, "really that brother Charles of yours made himself rather too ridiculous by writing those letters to Lady Abdy about his intention to die, in case she continued cruel."

"I have no more patience with Charles Bentinck than you have," said Frederick, "particularly with his bringing Lady Abdy to my brother's house. I told him he ought to be ashamed of himself."

"I do not know anything about that, I only allude to the folly of a strong young man like Charles Bentinck, sitting down to his muffins and eggs in a state of perfect health, and, with his mouth crammed full of both, calling for half a sheet of paper to write to Lady Abdy, that he was, at that present writing, about to die! and therefore took up his pen, to request her to be kind to his daughter Georgiana when he should be no more!"

"I do not set up for a remarkably clever fellow," Fred Bentinck observed; "but if I had made such a fool of myself as Charles did in that business, I would blow my brains out!"

"You are helping him out of it nicely," Brummell observed to Fred Bentinck.

"I have no patience with people who expose themselves," continued Fred Bentinck; "because it is in everybody's power to be silent: and, as to love-letters, a man has no excuse for writing them."

"There's no wisdom below the girdle, some philosopher said in old times," I remarked.

"I wish I could break you of that dreadful habit of making such indecent allusions, Harriette!" said Fred Bentinck.

"I never make them to any one but you."

"I'll give you ten pounds if you will let me burn this book," said Bentinck, taking up Fanblas.

"In the meantime," I continued, "you seem to be glancing your eye over it with something like satisfaction, for a man, such as the Duke of York describes, of unblemished reputation for chastity! But, to revert to your brother's dying, with the hot muffins in his mouth, for Lady Abdy. Would not a man, who really and seriously had made up his mind to die for love, have written a little note and, after sealing it with a death's head or something of that kind, have hidden it somewhere, to be delivered when he should be defunct—instead of talking of death, like Shakespeare's

'——certain Lord, neat and trimly dress'd,

Fresh as a bridegroom and his chin new reap'd.'"

"Thank God," said Fred Bentinck, laughing, "I shall never be in love!"

"Why you adore me, and have done so for the last twelvemonth," said I; "but I want you to transfer your love to a friend of mine."

"Do Fred," said Brummell, taking up his hat, "moderate your passion if possible, and be sure to burn those leather breeches of yours."

"I want you," continued I, after Brummell had left us, "I want you to fall in love with Julia Johnstone."

"She is a fine woman," answered Fred Bentinck; "only I am so afraid she should love me in return; and if you, Julia, or any woman were to love me, I should be sick directly."

"How do you know?" I asked; "who on earth ever tried you that way?"

"Why, there was a woman six years ago," said Frederick, "who certainly did love me."

"How very extraordinary!" I remarked.

"At least," continued Bentinck, "she gave me such proofs as no man could doubt, and I assure you I was never so sick, or so disgusted, in my whole life; and so I am now whenever I happen to meet her."

"Fiez vous à moi, donc," said I, "for here you shall ever find safety."

"I know it," answered Bentinck, "and that is why I like you."

He now recollected his intention of visiting the Duchess of York, and took his leave.

Lord Ponsonby and myself met every evening, for more than a week. We were never tired of conversing with each other. His humour exactly suited mine. In short, though I have been called agreeable all my life, I am convinced that I was never half so pleasant or so witty as in Ponsonby's society. We seldom contrived to separate before five or six o'clock in the morning, and Ponsonby generally came to me as soon as it was dark. Nor did we always wait for the evening to see each other, though respect for Lady Ponsonby made us ever, by mutual consent, avoid all risk of wounding her feelings; therefore, almost every day after dinner we met in the park by appointment, not to speak but only to look at each other.

One morning, being greatly struck with the beauty of a young lady who drove by me in a very elegant little carriage, while I was expecting to see Lord Ponsonby, I inquired of the gentleman who was walking with me if he knew who she was! It was the man well known in the fashionable world by the appellation of Poodle Byng, the title of Poodle having been bestowed on him owing to his very curly white locks, in defence of which he always declared that his head was the original from which all the young men and their barbers took base copies.

"It is," answered Poodle, "that most lovely creature, Lady Fanny Ponsonby, whom we are all sighing and dying for."

She was indeed very lovely, and did not appear to be more than eighteen. I considered her with respect and admiration, unmixed with jealousy. This was not the rose; but she had dwelled with it. I thought that she resembled Lord Ponsonby, and I felt that I could have loved her dearly. "Thank heaven," thought I, "this beautiful girl appears quite calm and happy; therefore I have done her no harm."

In the evening I was eager to praise her to her husband. "She possesses all the beauty of the Jerseys," said I to him; "and what a pretty little foot!" This I had observed as she got out of her carriage in Curzon-street.

"How very odd!" Ponsonby remarked,

"What is odd?"

"Why, I do believe you like Fanny!"

"Be sure of it then," I answered. "I like her as much as I should dislike any woman who did not love you dearly. Listen to me, Ponsonby," I continued, taking his hand, and speaking with steady firmness. "All my religion is from my heart, and not from books. If ever our intimacy is discovered so as to disturb her peace of mind, on that day we must separate for ever. I can but die, and God, I hope, will have mercy on me, very soon after our separation, if ever it should be found necessary; but we are not monsters! therefore we will never indulge in selfish enjoyment at the expense of misery to any one of our fellow creatures, much less one who depends on you for all her happiness."

"And she is very happy, thank God," said Ponsonby, "and I would rather forfeit my life than destroy her peace."

"Be firm in that I entreat you," I replied, "for there can be no rest here nor hereafter without the acquittal of our hearts. Mine was devoted to you with that sincere ardour and deep character of feeling which is so natural to me, before I knew that you were married. I know it now, too late to endure life when you shall have left me; but I can die when her happiness shall require it." Alas! I knew not half the anguish and suffering the human frame can endure, and yet survive!

One night, about a week from the day Ponsonby first visited me, when I did not expect him till midnight, I retired to bed and fell fast asleep, which said long nap neither Ponsonby nor any one else had disturbed. When I awoke, the sun was shining through my curtains. My first thoughts were always on Ponsonby, and I recollected, with a deep feeling of disappointment, that he had promised the night before to come to me by midnight, and I had desired my maid to send him up into my room as soon as he arrived. I felt for his little watch, which I always placed under my pillow; judge my astonishment to find, attached to it, a magnificent gold chain of exquisite workmanship. I began to think myself in the land of fairies! and still more so, when I observed a very beautiful pearl ring on one of my fingers. I rubbed my eyes and opened them wide, to ascertain beyond a doubt that I was broad awake. A very small strip of writing paper, which I had drawn from under my pillow with my watch, now caught my attention and I read, written with a pencil in Ponsonby's small beautiful character: "Dors, cher enfant, je t'aime trop tendrement, pour t'éveiller."

It was very sentimental and affectionate; for Ponsonby knew how much I required rest. I was very grateful, and yet I thought it altogether exceedingly provoking! How could I be so stupid as not to awake, even when he had his hand under my pillow, in search of my watch! I rang my bell, and inquired of my maid how long she thought Lord Ponsonby had stayed with me the night before.

"More than an hour," was the reply.

"Dear Ponsonby," said I, as soon as she had quitted the room, while I bestowed a thousand kisses on the beautiful watch and chain, "you are the first man on earth who ever sacrificed his own pleasure and passions to secure my repose!"

Lord Ponsonby's father still continued another fortnight in the same hopeless state. His favourite son deeply lamented his illness, and had been indefatigable in his attentions; refusing to visit me or anybody as long as there was hope, or while his father could derive comfort from his son's affections; but, when nothing more could be done, he had sought comfort in the society of the person who loved him best. I should do Lord Ponsonby great injustice were I to say that he ever forgot or neglected his father.

I asked a friend of Lord Ponsonby one day why he did not adore his beautiful wife? He had no idea that I was acquainted with his lordship.

"Lord Ponsonby is always very kind and affectionate to her," was the reply.

"True," I continued; "but I have heard that he does not fly to her for consolation when he is melancholy, nor consult her, nor make a friend of her."

"Lady Fanny is a sweet-tempered child," said he; "but not at all clever: and then, poor thing! she is very deaf, which affliction came on after a violent attack of scarlet fever."

"What a beautiful, sweet and calm expression of countenance she possesses," I remarked, "so pale, that her features at first sight appear only pretty; but on examination they are found perfect; and her dark, clear, brown eyes——"

"So like your own," said the gentleman, interrupting me.

"I have heard that remark made before," I replied, blushing deeply; "but I am not vain enough to credit it."

"With all their beauty," remarked Ponsonby's friend, "men soon grow tired of those Jerseys, with the exception only of Lady——, with whom the wicked world say the Duke of Argyle has been in love more than twenty years."

"Is not the boy they call Frank supposed to be a son of the duke?" I asked.

"I have heard so; but let us hope it is all vile scandal."

"With all my heart; but how does Lady Fanny Ponsonby pass her time?"

"She draws prettily," he observed: "and she has now got a little companion she is very fond of."

"Who is that?" said I.

"A mouse, which, having one night showed its little face to her ladyship in her drawing-room, she so coaxed him with her dainties for three weeks together, that she contrived to tame him: and now he will eat them out of her lovely hands."

"But then after the mouse is gone to bed," said I, "how does her ladyship amuse herself?"

"With her younger sister, or in writing or drawing. Lady Fanny does not much care for society."

"She is not a flirt, I believe?"

"What man can she think it worth while to flirt with," answered he, "being married to such a one as Ponsonby."

I was charmed to hear my own sentiments from the lips of another, and one of his own sex too.

"You admire Lord Ponsonby then?" said I.

"Admire! depend upon it there is nothing like him in all Europe. I speak of him altogether, as to his beauty, his manners, and his talents; but Lord Ponsonby," he continued, "owing to his extreme reserve and his excessive shyness is very little known. He never desires to be known or appreciated but by his own particular friends: yet I know few so capable of distinguishing themselves anywhere, particularly in the senate, as his lordship: his remarkably fine voice, and his language, always so persuasive and eloquent, besides he is such an excellent politician. He will now, shortly, by the expected death of his father," continued the gentleman, whose name if I recollect well, was Matthew Lee, "become one of the peers of the United Kingdom. I was telling him, the other day, how much we should be disappointed if he did not take a very active part in the debates. 'God forbid!' said Ponsonby. 'It is all I can do to find nerve for yes or no, when there is a question in the House, and that in a whisper.'"

"How came he to be so shy?" I asked.

"And how came it to become him so well?" returned his friend, "for it would make any other man awkward, and Ponsonby is most graceful when he is most embarrassed. I have known him from a boy. We were at school together. The ladies were all running mad for him before he was fifteen, and I really believe, that at eighteen Ponsonby, with the true genuine Irish character and warmest passions, had not looked any woman full in the face; and to this day his friends are obliged to make him half tipsy in order to enjoy his society. Yet, with all this timidity," he went on, observing that I was never tired of the subject, and could pay attention to no other, "Ponsonby has a remarkably fine high spirit. One night, very late, near Dublin, he met two of his brothers just as they had got into a violent row with three raw-boned, half naked Irish pats. Seeing that his brothers were drunk, Ponsonby began to remonstrate with them, and strove to persuade them to come home quietly, when one of those ruffians struck his youngest brother a very unfair blow with a stick.

"'Now, d—n your hearts and bl—ds!' said Lord Ponsonby, stripping and setting to with the strength and spirit of a prize-fighter.

"His own mother at this moment could not have known her son: the metamorphosis was nearly as laughable as it was astonishing."

I asked how long he had been married?

"Not five years."

"And Lady Fanny's age?"

"Twenty."

I then asked if he married her for love or money?

"Money!" said Lee, indignantly. "It is now clear to me that you do not know Lord Ponsonby. I was just beginning to suspect from the multiplicity of your questions that you did."

"He was very much in love with her then?" I inquired, without attending to this observation.

"She was not fourteen," answered Lee, "when Ponsonby first met her at her mother's, Lady Jersey's. He was of course, like everybody else, speedily struck with her beauty. She was not deaf then, but shortly afterwards she had a violent attack of scarlet fever, during which her life was despaired of for several weeks: indeed, there was scarcely a hope of her recovery. I remember Ponsonby said to me one night, as we passed by Lady Jersey's house together—'The loveliest young creature I have ever beheld on earth lies in that room dying.' The first time Lady Fanny appeared in her mother's drawing-room she resembled a spirit so fair, so calm, so transparent. All her magnificent hair, which had before reached and now again descends much below her waist, had been shorn from her beautiful little head. She often took her lace cap off and exhibited herself thus to anybody, to raise a laugh; or perhaps she knew that she was, even without hair, as lovely as ever.

"Lord Ponsonby, as he has told me since, was present when her ladyship first left her room, and soon discovered that she was now afflicted with deafness. He felt the deepest interest, admiration and pity for her. He considered with horror the bare possibility of this sweet, fragile little being, becoming the wife of some man, who might hereafter treat her harshly. Added to this, I fancy," continued Lee, "Ponsonby had discovered that he was not indifferent to her little ladyship; so, to secure her from any of these evils, he resolved to propose for her himself. I need not add that he was joyfully accepted by both mother and daughter. He might have done better," added Lee, "and I fancy Ponsonby sometimes wishes that his wife could be his friend and companion: but that is quite out of the question. Her ladyship is good and will do as she is bid; but, besides her deafness, her understanding is neither bright nor lively. Lord Ponsonby shows her the sort of indulgence and tenderness which a child requires; but he must seek for a companion elsewhere."

Mr. Lee then took leave of me: and a very few days after this conversation had taken place, Lord Ponsonby's father breathed his last in the arms of his son, who immediately left town without seeing me; but he wrote to me most affectionately.