He began to think Mervyn conceited; there was a 'provoking probability of succeeding' about him, and altogether something that was beginning to grow offensive and odious.
'She knows well enough I like her,' so his liking said in confidence to his vanity, and even _he_ hardly overheard them talk; 'better a great deal than I knew it myself, till old Strafford got together this confounded stupid dinner-party (he caught Miss Chattesworth glancing at him with a peculiar look of enquiry).

Why the plague did he ask _me_ here?
it was Puddock's turn, and he likes venison and compots, and--and--but 'tis like them--the women fall in love with the man who's in love with himself, like Narcissus yonder--and they can't help it--not they--and what care I ?--hang it! I say, what is't to me ?--and yet--if she were to leave it--what a queer unmeaning place Chapelizod would be!' 'And what do you say to that, Captain Devereux ?' cried the hearty voice of old General Chattesworth, and, with a little shock, the captain dropped from the clouds into his chair, and a clear view of the larded fowl before him, and his own responsibilities and situation-- 'Some turkey!' he said, awaking, and touching the carving-knife and fork, with a smile and a bow; and he mingled once more in the business and bustle of life.
And soon there came in the general talk and business one of those sudden lulls which catch speakers unawares, and Mr.Beauchamp was found saying-- 'I saw her play on Thursday, and, upon my honour, the Bellamy is a mockery, a skeleton and a spectacle.' 'That's no reason,' said Aunt Becky, who, as usual, had got up a skirmish, and was firing away in the cause of Mossop and Smock-alley play-house; 'why, she would be fraudulently arrested in her own chair, on her way to the play-house, by the contrivance of the rogue Barry, and that wicked mountebank, Woodward.' 'You're rather hard upon them, Madam,' said Mrs.Colonel Stafford, who stood up for Crow-street, with a slight elevation of her chin.
'Very true, indeed, Mistress Chattesworth,' cried the dowager, overlooking Madam Stafford's parenthesis, and tapping an applause with her fan, and, at the same time, rewarding the champion of Smock-alley, for she was one of the faction, with one of her large, painted smiles, followed by a grave and somewhat supercilious glance at the gentleman of the household; 'and I don't believe _they_, at least, can think her a spectacle, and--a--the like, or they'd hardly have conspired to lock her in a sponging-house, while she should have been in the play-house.

What say you, Mistress Chattesworth ?' 'Ha, ha! no, truly, my lady; but you know she's unfortunate, and a stranger, and the good people in this part of the world improve so safe an opportunity of libelling a friendless gentlewoman.' This little jet of vitriol was intended for the eye of the Castle beau; but he, quite innocent of the injection, went on serenely-- 'So they do, upon my honour, Madam, tell prodigious naughty tales about her: yet upon my life I do pity her from my soul: how that fellow Calcraft, by Jove--she says, you know, she's married to him, but we know better--he has half broken her heart, and treated her with most refined meanness, as I live; in the green-room, where she looks an infinity worse than on the stage, she told me----' 'I dare say,' said Aunt Becky, rather stiffly, pulling him up; for though she had fought a round for poor George Anne Bellamy for Mossop's sake, she nevertheless had formed a pretty just estimate of that faded, good-natured, and insolvent demirep, and rather recoiled from any anecdotes of her telling.
'And Calcraft gave her his likeness in miniature,' related the macaroni, never minding; 'set round with diamonds, and, will you believe it?
when she came to examine it, they were not brilliants, but rose-diamonds--despicable fellow!' Here the talk began to spring up again in different places, and the conversation speedily turned into what we have heard it before, and the roar and confusion became universal, and swallowed up what remained of poor George Anne's persecutions..