"Not above three or four cases of life and death!" said Agnes, laughing. "But you jest at scars who never felt a wound."
"I most heartily sympathize with them all," replied Captain De Crespigny, with an extra-sentimental sigh. "I have gone through every sorrow of life myself—outraged affections, and all that sort of thing. You cannot conceive, Miss Dunbar, how like we victims are sometimes to the frog in the fable, inflated with empty hopes."
"I must shut my eyes to that."
"Your eyes should never be shut. They are much too beautiful! With respect to your admirers, they might say, like the weather-cock to the wind, 'Si vous ne changez pas, je suis constante!' The whole world has been pulling caps for you all winter, and you pretend to have limited yourself to three or four victims! Impossible! You are concealing the half of them! Forgetting Captains A——, B——, C——, and D——. I have as many young ladies as that dying for me. Now, do let us run over an authentic list of their names. Show me all your court-yards at once. I could bet the finest camellia at Loddige's, that you do not name them all."
"Who shall I say?" exclaimed Agnes, getting up an extempore blush, and her archest smiles. "I have a most inhospitable memory for bores, and shall forget two-thirds of them. Captain Digby, slightly wounded; Colonel Meade, pierced through the heart; Captain O'Brien, slowly recovering; Mr. Deveril, despaired of; Lord Wigton,——"
"Killed outright!" interrupted Captain De Crespigny. "You mention him in rather a more relenting tone than the rest, like Bonaparte, when he wept over one wounded man, alter condemning hundreds to death. But you are come to a period already. Is there no other worthy of remembrance?"
"Only one, whom I cannot name!" replied Agnes, turning away. "Last, but not least."
"Ah! some poor fellow with nothing, I suppose—waiting, perhaps, for the death of a rich relation; but those tiresome old bores always live for ever, and a day besides. Whoever he is, let me advise you not to think of him; a man should as soon ask the sun in the hemisphere to wait for him, as a young lady in the full blaze of her beauty and attractions. No, no, Miss Dunbar, take my advice. Be like time and tide. I have a real cousinly interest in your welfare, and should be delighted, on my return, to find this room fragrant with cake, and glittering with favors. I shall come down on purpose, if you ask me! I positively shall!"
If a look could kill, Captain De Crespigny must have withered away beneath the glance of Agnes' eyes, which streamed with indignant flashes of anger and surprise; but unconscious, apparently, of being otherwise than most agreeable, he continued, in his most captivating manner.
"I must be off now to Macleay's. Half a dozen friends are dying to obtain a likeness of me, and a deputation of ladies made me promise lately to sit for them. I wonder what can induce me to take so much trouble," added he, with a gay, triumphant laugh. "The painter is quite afraid he shall be robbed and murdered for it."