there in splendid beauty; at about half-past twelve the dancing began, and it was what is called a very fine ball.  While I was dancing with Mr. C——­, I saw my father talking to a handsome and very magnificent lady, who my partner told me was the Duchess of B——­; after our quadrille, when I rejoined my father, he said to me, “Fanny, let me present you to ——­” here he mumbled something perfectly inaudible, and I made a courtesy, and the lady smiled sweetly and said some civil things and went away.  “Whose name did you mention,” said I to my father, with some wickedness, “just now when you introduced me to that lady?” “Nobody’s, my dear, nobody’s; I haven’t the remotest idea who she is.”  “The Duchess of B——­,” said I, glibly, strong in the knowledge I had just acquired from my partner.  “Bless my soul!” cried the poor man, with a face of the most ludicrous dismay, “so it was!  I had quite forgotten her, though she was good enough to remember me, and here I have been talking cross-questions and crooked answers to her for the last half-hour!”

Was ever any thing so terrible!  I feared my poor father would go home and remain awake all night, sobbing softly to himself, like the eldest of the nine Miss Simmonses in the ridiculous novel, because in her nervous flurry at a great dinner party she had refused instead of accepting a gentleman’s offer to drink wine with her.  Lady G——­ then came up, whom he did remember, and who was “truly gracious;” and I left him consoled, and, I hope, having forgotten his dreadful duchess again.  All the world, as the saying is, was at this ball, and it certainly was a very fine assembly.  We danced in a splendid room hung with tapestry—­a magnificent apartment, though it seemed to me incongruous for the purpose; dim burning lights and flitting ghosts and gusts of wind and distant footfalls and sepulchral voices being the proper furniture of the “tapestried chamber,” and not wax candles, to the tune of sunlight and bright eyes and dancing feet and rustling silks and gauzes and laughing voices, and all the shine and shimmer and flaunting flutter of a modern ball....

At half-past two, though the carriage had been ordered at two, my father told me he would not “spoil sport,” and so angelically stayed till past four.  He is the best of fathers, the most affectionate of parents, the most benevolent of men!  There is a great difference between being chaperoned by one’s father instead of one’s mother:  the latter, poor dear! never flirts, gets very sleepy and tired, and wants to go home before she comes; the former flirts and talks with all the pretty, pleasant women he meets, and does not care till what hour in the morning—­a frame of mind favorable to much dancing for the youngers.  After all, I had to come away in the middle of a delightful mazurka.

Tuesday, June 7th.—­ ...  We had a very pleasant dinner at Mr. Harness’s.  Moore was there, but Paganini was the chief subject