g I had ever met before. Although having
seen scarcely anything of the world, her knowledge of character seemed
an instinct, and her quick appreciation of the ludicrous features of
many of the company was accompanied by a naive expression, and at the
same time a witty terseness of phrase, that showed me how much real
intelligence lay beneath that laughing look. Unlike my fair cousin, Lady
Julia, her raillery never wounded: hers were the fanciful combinations
which a vivid and sparkling imagination conjures up, but never the
barbed and bitter arrows of sarcasm. Catching up in a second any passing
absurdity, she could laugh at the scene, yet seem to spare the actor.
Julia, on the contrary, with what the French call _l'esprit moqueur_,
never felt that her wit had hit its mark till she saw her victim
writhing and quivering beneath her.

There is always something in being the partner of the belle of a
ball-room. The little bit of envy and jealousy, whose limit is to be the
duration of a waltz or quadrille, has somehow its feeling of pleasure.
There is the reflective flattery in the thought of a fancied preference,
that raises one in his own esteem; and, as the muttered compliments and
half-spoken praises of the bystanders fall upon your ears, you seem to
feel that you are a kind of shareholder in the company, and ought to
retire from business with your portion of the profits. Such, I know,
were some of my feelings at the period in question; and, as I pulled up
my stock and adjusted my sash, I looked upon the crowd about me with a
sense of considerable self-satisfaction, and began really for the first
time to enjoy myself.

Scarcely was the dance concluded, when a general movement was
perceptible towards the door, and the word 'supper,' repeated from voice
to voice, announced that the merriest hour in Irish life had sounded.
Delighted to have Miss Bellew for my companion, I edged my way into the
mass, and was borne along on the current.

The view from the top of the staircase was sufficiently amusing: a
waving mass of feathers of every shape and hue, a crowd of spangled
turbans, bald and powdered heads, seemed wedged inextricably together,
swaying backwards and forwards with one impulse, as the crowd at the
door of the supper-room advanced or receded. The crash of plates and
knives, the jingling of glasses, the popping of champagne corks, told
that the attack had begun, had not even the eager faces of those nearer
the door