I felt my cheek reddening at the moment, and stared around me like one whose trials were becoming downright insufferable, when happily dinner was announced, and terminated my embarrassment.
As the party filed past, I perceived that Miss Dashwood was not among them; and with a heart relieved for the moment by the circumstance, and inventing a hundred conjectures to account for it, I followed with the aides-de-camp and the staff to the dinner-room.
The temperament is very Irish, I believe, which renders a man so elastic that from the extreme of depression to the very climax of high spirits, there is but one spring.

To this I myself plead guilty, and thus, scarcely was I freed from the embarrassment which a meeting with Lucy Dashwood must have caused, when my heart bounded with lightness.
When the ladies withdrew, the events of the campaign became the subject of conversation, and upon these, very much to my astonishment, I found myself consulted as an authority.

The Douro, from some fortunate circumstance, had given me a reputation I never dreamed of, and I heard my opinions quoted upon topics of which my standing as an officer, and my rank in the service, could not imply a very extended observation.

Power was absent on duty; and happily for my supremacy, the company consisted entirely of generals in the commissariat or new arrivals from England, all of whom knew still less than myself.
What will not iced champagne and flattery do?
Singly, they are strong impulses; combined, their power is irresistible.

I now heard for the first time that our great leader had been elevated to the peerage by the title of Lord Wellington, and I sincerely believe--however now I may smile at the confession--that, at the moment, I felt more elation at the circumstance than he did.