However, that was no auspicious moment for didactic warnings.
"Here we are!" cried Lionel,—"Putney Bridge."
They reached the little inn by the river-side, and while dinner was getting ready they hired a boat. Vance took the oars.
VANCE.—"Not so pretty here as by those green quiet banks along which we glided, at moonlight, five years ago."
LIONEL.—"Ah, no! And that innocent, charming child, whose portrait you took,—you have never heard of her since?"
VANCE.—"Never! How should I? Have you?"
LIONEL.—"Only what Darrell repeated to me. His lawyer had ascertained that she and her grandfather had gone to America. Darrell gently implied that, from what he learned of them, they scarcely merited the interest I felt in their fate. But we were not deceived, were we, Vance?"
VANCE—"No; the little girl—what was her name? Sukey? Sally? Sophy, true—Sophy had something about her extremely prepossessing, besides her pretty face; and, in spite of that horrid cotton print, I shall never forget it."
LIONEL—"Her face! Nor I. I see it still before me!"
VANCE—"Her cotton print! I see it still before me! But I must not be ungrateful. Would you believe it,—that little portrait, which cost me three pounds, has made, I don't say my fortune, but my fashion?"