Captain Dolignan told this gentleman his story in gleeful accents;
but Major Hoskyns heard him coldly, and as coldly answered that he
had known a man to lose his life for the 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.
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