"I certainly am unknown," said her companion, with a strange little conscious laugh, which seemed to Agnes quite unaccountable. "Has De Crespigny so universal an acquaintance? People must be more at a loss for society than I had supposed!"
"You know," replied Agnes, in an unanswerable tone, "he is the future Marquis of Doncaster."
"Is he?" answered the old gentleman, with another short, dry laugh, and a proving shrug of polite non-conviction. "So much the better for him. You are quite sure of that?"
"Perfectly certain! His uncle is a rich old quiz, who never thought anybody good enough to marry till now, when nobody would accept of him. The old peer could not get a girl to marry him now if he sent the bellman round to advertise for one. Captain De Crespigny's succession is as undoubted as anything can be which depends on the life of a whimsical, superannuated uncle, these many years past in the last stage of infirmity. He has the wrinkles ironed out of his face every morning with a smoothing iron, and I am told his very bones rattle whenever he moves!"
"Indeed!" exclaimed the stranger, in a hard, withering tone, and with a cool sneer on his lip. "How very singular!"
"Poor, dear old man! he was handsome once, and never can forget that; but it is a century since he lost any looks he ever had, and I am told he is quite preternaturally old, withered, and whimsical. Quite ingeniously ugly! laid a faire peur! I should be afraid to go near him, in case his ugliness might be reflected upon me; but I hear he fancies himself quite captivating still. Patrick tells me that the old Marquis invested so large a sum of money lately in a new set of teeth, that his nephew is quite uneasy lest he should be robbed and murdered for the gold they are set in. He scratches his wig sometimes to look as if it were his own hair; and he had an ossification of the leg last year, in consequence of a disappointment in love!"
"Very remarkable!"
"Yes!" added Agnes, encouraged by the attention she had evidently excited, and happy to vent all her long accumulated antipathy. "The oldest man who ever lived certainly died at last, but I believe nobody ever before existed so long in this world without doing one atom of good either to himself or others. He keeps a Roman Catholic Abbe to think for him; and once his wig turned grey in a single night with distress of mind when they had a quarrel. The Marquis is so afraid of apoplexy, that when he walks out the Abbe Mordaunt always carries a lancet to bleed him instantly, in case he has a fit."
"How very considerate! You have all this authentic intelligence on the best authority of course?" asked the stranger with a submissive bow. "De Crespigny's entire! I understand the nephew has not inherited his uncle's antipathy to marrying! If this very whimsical old relative could be safely packed into his grave,—let me assure you he is even more whimsical than has been represented, though not quite so infirm,—I suppose Captain De Crespigny would very soon dispose of himself and his coronet."
"Certainly!" replied Agnes, unable to repress a conscious smile and heightened color. "In that case we should all probably see before long a Marchioness of Doncaster!"