daily be seen, whose unchanged places, added to their
indescribable air of at-homeishness, bespoke them as the friends of the
family.

O'Grady, at Mrs. Rooney's right hand, did the honours of the soup; Lord
Dudley, at the other end of the table, supported Mr. Rooney, while to my
lot Miss Bellew fell. But, as our places at table never changed, there
was nothing marked in my thus every day finding myself beside her, and
resuming my place on our return to the drawing-room. To me, I confess,
she formed the great attraction of the house. Less imbued than my friend
O'Grady with the spirit of fun, I could not have gone on from day to day
to amuse myself with the eccentricities of the Rooneys, while I could
not, on the other hand, have followed Lord Dudley's lead, and continued
to receive the hospitalities of a house while I sneered at the
pretensions of its owner.

Under any circumstances Louisa Bellew might be considered a very
charming person; but, contrasted with those by whom she was
surrounded, her attractions were very great. Indeed, her youth, her
light-heartedness, and the buoyancy of her spirit, concealed to a great
degree the sorrow it cost her to be associated with her present hosts;
for, although they were kind to her, and she felt and acknowledged their
kindness, yet the humiliating sense of a position which exposed her to
the insolent familiarity of the idle, the dissipated, or the underbred
visitors of the house, gradually impressed itself upon her manner, and
tempered her mild and graceful nature with a certain air of hauteur and
distance. A circumstance, slight in itself, but sufficiently indicative
of this, took place some weeks after what I have mentioned.

Lord Dudley de Vere, who, from his rank and condition, was looked upon
as a kind of privileged person in the Rooney family, sitting rather
later than usual after dinner, and having drunk a great deal of wine,
offered a wager that, on his appearance in the drawing-room, not only
would he propose for, but be accepted by, any unmarried lady in the
room. The puppyism and coxcombry of such a wager might have been
pardoned, were it not that the character of the individual, when sober,
was in perfect accordance with this drunken boast. The bet, which was
for three hundred guineas, was at once taken up; and one of the party
running hastily up to the drawing-room, obtained the names of the ladies
there, which, being written on slips of paper, were thrown into a