Scully, after partaking of soup and fish (he, during their
discussion, had been thinking over all the former love-and-hate passages
between himself and Lady Gorgon), turned very red, and began talking to
her.

"Were you not at the opera on Tuesday?" began he, assuming at once the
airs of a man of fashion. "I thought I caught a glimpse of you in the
Duchess of Diddlebury's box."

"Opera, Mr. Scully?" (pronouncing the word "Scully" with the utmost
softness). "Ah, no! we seldom go, and yet too often. For serious persons
the enchantments of that place are too dangerous. I am so nervous--so
delicate; the smallest trifle so agitates, depresses, or irritates me,
that I dare not yield myself up to the excitement of music. I am too
passionately attached to it; and, shall I tell you? it has such a
strange influence upon me, that the smallest false note almost drives me
to distraction, and for that very reason I hardly ever go to a concert
or a ball."

"Egad," thought Scully, "I recollect when she would dance down a matter
of five-and-forty couple, and jingle away at the 'Battle of Prague' all
day."

She continued: "Don't you recollect, I do, with--oh, what regret!--that
day at Oldborough race-ball, when I behaved with such sad rudeness to
you? You will scarcely believe me, and yet I assure you 'tis the fact,
the music had made me almost mad. Do let me ask your pardon for my
conduct. I was not myself. Oh, Mr. Scully! I am no worldly woman; I
know my duties, and I feel my wrongs. Nights and days have I lain awake
weeping and thinking of that unhappy day--that I should ever speak so to
an old friend; for we WERE old friends, were we not?"

Scully did not speak; but his eyes were bursting out of his head, and
his face was the exact colour of a deputy-lieutenant's uniform.

"That I should ever forget myself and you so! How I have been longing
for this opportunity to ask you to forgive me! I asked Lady Mantrap,
when I heard you were to be here, to invite me to her party. Come, I
know you will forgive me--your eyes say you will. You used to look so in
old days, and forgive me my caprices THEN. Do give me a little wine--we
will drink to the memory of old days."

Her eyes filled with tears; and poor Scully's hand caused such a
rattling and trembling of the glass and the decanter that the Duke
of Doldrum--who had been, during the course of this whispered
sentimentality, describing a famous run with the Queen's hounds at the
top of