A BALL ROOM, AXD A BELLE. 121 



conversation ; every thing was of course, and every 

 body from the gentlemen, to the gentlemen's gentle- 

 men, showed that they felt it to be so. Again Fairfax 

 ^vas surprised that among a bachelor party of sports- 

 men not a word of dog or horse talk — among a party 

 of fox-hunters not a word of fox-hunting — among a 

 party of hereditary legislators, not a word of politics 

 was spoken. The only possible allusion to the pur- 

 pose of their congregation at Melton, discoverable 

 during the evening, was when a very old and very il- 

 lustrious peer, himself an old master of fox hounds, 

 who sat opposite to him, but to whom he had not been 

 introduced, asked him to drink champagne, and hoped 

 he was well enough satisfied with his first day at 

 Melton. 



Fairfax was sorry when the dinner party broke up, 

 so quickly had the hours flown, and so gay and clever 

 withal had been the table talk, with no great guest to 

 monopolize and oratorize, but a dozen skilful players 

 ready to catch up the ball of conversation ere it fell, 

 cast it back each to his neighbor, and maintain an in- 

 cessant fire of repartee and epigram and persiflage, 

 mixed with much poetry and some few touches of 

 romance, but nothing of enthusiasm or even eagerness. 



He was half inclined, before he entered the ball-room, 

 to wish that the ball was at the devil, for taking him 

 away from the dinner party ; but before he had been 

 in the room half an hour, he almost wished the dinner 

 party had been at the devil for keeping him so long 

 away from the ball. 



The rooms were filling, but not yet full when the 

 party entered with Fairfax in the middle, for he did 

 not think it necessary because he was a republican to 

 prove his republicanism by taking the pas of peers of 

 the realm on their own ground. 



The first coup d'oeil of the rooms did not strike him 

 very much, for there was none at all of the pomp and 



