BEFOOLING • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Befooling

... lay sprawling upon his lounge in a cotton velvet Italian coat, inimitably befogged and bebuttoned—and puffed profusely, following the intervolving smoke with his eye—his meditations were always the same. He was always thinking of Hope Wayne, and befooling himself with the mask of art, actually hiding himself from himself: and not perceiving that when a man's sole thought by day and night is a certain woman, and an endless speculation about the quality of her feeling for another man, he is simply ...

— Trumps • George William Curtis