Stories by English Authors: England | Page 3

same thing.
"That is nothing," continued the major, "but unfortunately he deserved
to lose it."

At this blood mounted to the younger man's temples, and his senior
added, "I mean to say he was thirty-five; you, I presume, are
twenty-one!"
"Twenty-five."
"That is much the same thing; will you be advised by me?"
"If you will advise me."
"Speak to no one of this, and send White the three pounds, that he may
think you have lost the bet."
"That is hard, when I won it."
"Do it, for all that, sir."
Let the disbelievers in human perfectibility know that this dragoon,
capable of a blush, did this virtuous action, albeit with violent
reluctance; and this was his first damper. A week after these events he
was at a ball. He was in that state of factitious discontent which belongs
to us amiable English. He was looking in vain for a lady equal in
personal attraction to the idea he had formed of George Dolignan as a
man, when suddenly there glided past him a most delightful vision--a
lady whose beauty and symmetry took him by the eyes; another look:
"It can't be! Yes, it is!" Miss Haythorn! (not that he knew her name),
but what an apotheosis!
The duck had become a peahen--radiant, dazzling; she looked twice as
beautiful and almost twice as large as before. He lost sight of her; he
found her again. She was so lovely she made him ill, and he alone must
not dance with her, speak to her. If he had been content to begin her
acquaintance the usual way it might have ended in kissing; it must end
in nothing. As she danced sparks of beauty fell from her on all around
but him; she did not see him; it was clear she never would see him. One
gentleman was particularly assiduous; she smiled on his assiduity; he
was ugly, but she smiled on him. Dolignan was surprised at his success,
his ill taste, his ugliness, his impertinence. Dolignan at last found

himself injured; who was this man? and what right had he to go on so?
"He never kissed her, I suppose," said Dolle. Dolignan could not prove
it, but he felt that somehow the rights of property were invaded. He
went home and dreamed of Miss Haythorn, and hated all the ugly
successful. He spent a fortnight trying to find out who his beauty was;
he never could encounter her again. At last he heard of her in this way:
a lawyer's clerk paid him a little visit and commenced a little action
against him in the name of Miss Haythorn for insulting her in a
railway-train.
The young gentleman was shocked, endeavoured to soften the lawyer's
clerk; that machine did not thoroughly comprehend the meaning of the
term. The lady's name, however, was at last revealed by this untoward
incident; from her name to her address was but a short step, and the
same day our crestfallen hero lay in wait at her door, and many a
succeeding day, without effect. But one fine afternoon she issued forth
quite naturally, as if she did it every day, and walked briskly on the
parade. Dolignan did the same, met and passed her many times on the
parade, and searched for pity in her eyes, but found neither look nor
recognition nor any other sentiment; for all this she walked and walked
till all the other promenaders were tired and gone; then her culprit
summoned resolution, and, taking off his hat, with a voice for the first
time tremulous, besought permission to address her. She stopped,
blushed, and neither acknowledged nor disowned his acquaintance. He
blushed, stammered out how ashamed he was, how he deserved to be
punished, how he was punished, how little she knew how unhappy he
was, and concluded by begging her not to let all the world know the
disgrace of a man who was already mortified enough by the loss of her
acquaintance. She asked an explanation; he told her of the action that
had been commenced in her name; she gently shrugged her shoulders,
and said, "How stupid they are!" Emboldened by this, he begged to
know whether or not a life of distant unpretending devotion would,
after a lapse of years, erase the memory of his madness--his crime!
She did not know!
She must now bid him adieu, as she had some preparations to make for

a ball in the Crescent, where everybody was to be. They parted, and
Dolignan determined to be at the ball where everybody was to be. He
was there, and after some time he obtained an introduction to Miss
Haythorn and he danced with her. Her manner was gracious. With the
wonderful tact of her sex, she seemed to have commenced the