not see the pretty girl beside
her in the carriage."

"Yes, yes, I saw her," said I, biting my lip with impatience, "and she
seemed evidently enjoying the infernal blunder I was committing. And
Mrs. Paul--oh, confound her! I can never endure the sight of her again!"

"My dear young friend," replied O'Grady, with an affected seriousness,
"I see that already the prejudices of your very silly countrymen have
worked their effect upon you. Had not Lord Dudley de Vere given you such
a picture of the Rooney family, you would probably be much more lenient
in your judgment: besides, after all, the error was yours, not hers. You
told her that the Duke had sent you; you told her the Duchess wished her
carriage beside her own."

"You take a singular mode," said I, pettishly, "to bring a man back to
a good temper, by showing him that he has no one to blame for his
misfortunes but himself. Confound them! look how they are all laughing
about us. Indeed, from the little I've seen, it is the only thing they
appear to do in this country."

At a signal from the Duke, O'Grady put spurs to his horse and cantered
down the line, leaving me to such reflections as I could form, beneath
the gaze of some forty persons, who could not turn to look without
laughing at me.

"This is pleasant," thought I; "this is really a happy _debut_: that I,
whose unimpeachable accuracy of manner and address should have won for
me, at the Prince's levee, the approbation of the first gentleman of
Europe, should here, among these semi-civilised savages, become an
object of ridicule and laughter. My father told me they were very
different; and my mother------" I had not patience to think of the
frightful effects my absurd situation might produce upon her nerves.
"Lady Julia, too--ah! there's the rub--my beautiful cousin, who, in the
slightest solecism of London manners, could find matter for sarcasm and
raillery. What would she think of me now? And this it is they persuaded
me to prefer to active service! What wound to a man's flesh could equal
one to his feelings? I would rather be condoled with than scoffed at any
day; and see! by Jove, they're laughing still. I would wager a fifty
that I furnish the dinner conversation for every table in the capital
this day."

The vine twig shows not more ingenuity, as it traverses some rocky crag
in search of the cool stream, at once its luxury and its life, than does
our injured self-love, in seeking for consolation fro