CHAPTER XXV.
THE ENTANGLEMENT.
When we think for a moment over all the toils, all the anxieties, all the fevered excitement of a _grande passion_, it is not a little singular that love should so frequently be elicited by a state of mere idleness; and yet nothing, after all, is so predisposing a cause as this.

Where is the man between eighteen and eight-and-thirty--might I not say forty--who, without any very pressing duns, and having no taste for strong liquor and _rouge-et-noir_, can possibly lounge through the long hours of his day without at least fancying himself in love?
The thousand little occupations it suggests become a necessity of existence; its very worries are like the wholesome opposition that purifies and strengthens the frame of a free state.

Then, what is there half so sweet as the reflective flattery which results from our appreciation of an object who in return deems us the _ne plus ultra_ of perfection?
There it is, in fact; that confounded bump of self-esteem does it all, and has more imprudent matches to answer for than all the occipital protuberances that ever scared poor Harriet Martineau.
Now, to apply my moralizing.

I very soon, to use the mess phrase, got "devilish spooney" about the "Dals." The morning drill, the riding-school, and the parade were all most fervently consigned to a certain military character that shall be nameless, as detaining me from some appointment made the evening before; for as I supped there each night, a party of one kind or another was always planned for the day following.

Sometimes we had a boating excursion to Cove, sometimes a picnic at Foaty; now a rowing party to Glanmire, or a ride, at which I furnished the cavalry.