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168 the next cotillon. Oh Paul! fancy my triumph! the old damsel said with a sigh, 'She remembered me very well,' ha! ha! ha! and I carried her off to the cotillon like another Theseus bearing away a second Ariadne. Not to be prolix on this part of my life, I went night after night to balls and routs, for admission to which half the fine gentlemen in London would have given their ears. And I improved my time so well with Lady Margaret, who was her own mistress, and had five thousand pounds,—a devilish bad portion for some, but not to be laughed at by me,—that I began to think when the happy day should be fixed. Meanwhile, as Lady Margaret introduced me to some of her friends, and my lodgings were in a good situation, I had been honoured with some real invitations. The only two questions I ever was asked were (carelessly), 'Was I the only son?' and on my veritable answer 'Yes!' 'What,' (this was more warmly put,)—'what was my county?'—luckily, my county was a wide one,—Yorkshire; and any of its inhabitants whom the fair interrogators might have questioned about me could only have answered, 'I was not in their part of it.'