In my first dim, unutterable anguish, I should have turned and fled; but my syren's voice had not lost all its power, despite the stout and dirty dressing-gown, for she was a very handsome woman, and could stand such things as well as anybody. She came towards me, with her softest smile, glancing at the bracelet on the bouquet, apologizing slightly for her négligé:--"I am so indolent. I only dress for those I care to please--and I never hoped to see _you_ to-day." In short, magnetizing me over again, and smoothing down my outraged sensibilities, till I ended by becoming almost blind (_quite_ I could not manage) to the checked _robe de chambre_ and the unbrushed bandeaux, by offering her my braceleted bouquet, which was very graciously accepted, and even by sharing the atrocious London porter, "that horrid stuff," she called it, "how I hate it! but it is the only thing Sir Benjamin Brodie allows me, I am so very delicate, you know, my sensibilities so frightfully acute!"
I had not twenty minutes to stay, having to be back at the barracks, or risk a reprimand, which, happily, the checked _peignoir_ had cooled me sufficiently to enable me to recollect. So I took my farewell--one not unlike Medora's and Conrad's, Fitzhervey and Guatamara having kindly withdrawn as soon as the bottled porter was finished--and I went out of the house in a very blissful state, despite Guinness and the unwelcome demi-toilette, which did not accord with Eugène Sue's and the Parlor Library's description of the general getting-up and stunning appearance of heroines and peeresses, "reclining, in robes of cloud-like tissue and folds of the richest lace, on a cabriole couch of amber velvet, while the air was filled with the voluptuous perfume of the flower-children of the South, and music from unseen choristers lulled the senses with its divinest harmony," &c., &c., &c.
Bottled porter and a checked dressing-gown! Say what you like, sirs, it takes a very strong passion to overcome _those_. I have heard men ascribe the waning of their affections after the honeymoon to the constant sight of their wives--whom before they had only seen making papa's coffee with an angelic air and a toilette _tirée à quatre épingles_--everlastingly coming down too late for breakfast in a dressing-gown; and, upon my soul, if ever I marry, which Heaven in pitiful mercy forfend! and my wife make her appearance in one of those confounded _peignoirs_, I will give that much-run-after and deeply-to-be-pitied public character, the Divorce Judge, some more work to do--I will, upon my honor.