A host should never show before the dressing-bell rings.
When that glad sound was at length heard, the ladies, as usual, immediately withdrew; and of course the first thing Amelia did when she got to her room was to run to the glass to see how she had been looking: when, grievous to relate, she found an angry hot spot in the act of breaking out on her nose.
What a distressing situation for a young lady, especially one with a spectacled suitor.

'Oh, dear!' she thought, as she eyed it in the glass, 'it will look like Vesuvius itself through his formidable inquisitors.' Worst of all, it was on the side she would have next him at dinner, should he choose to sit with his back to the fire.

However, there was no help for it, and the maid kindly assuring her, as she worked away at her hair, that it 'would never be seen,' she ceased to watch it, and turned her attention to her toilette.

The fine, new broad-lace flounced, light-blue satin dress--a dress so much like a ball dress as to be only appreciable as a dinner one by female eyes--was again in requisition; while her fine arms were encircled with chains and armlets of various brilliance and devices.
Thus attired, with a parting inspection of the spot, she swept downstairs, with as smart a bouquet as the season would afford.

As luck would have it, she encountered his lordship himself wandering about the passage in search of the drawing-room, of whose door he had not made a sufficient observation on leaving.