"Take care, or I shall tell him so!"
"Pray do! It will save time, and he has but little to spare!"
"I am very certain, if the old boy were ninety years younger, he would make you an offer! But certainly marriage is a juvenile indiscretion, only for young people like us!"
"Lord Doncaster says, he is any age I like, and pledges himself always to continue so!" replied Agnes, laughing, though she became agitated to the very tips of her fingers, while, trying not to seem embarrassed, she hastily drew her gloves on and off, adjusted her necklace, and betrayed, by other nervous manœuvres, that her mind was not quite at ease under the observant eye of Captain De Crespigny, who looked at her with satirical surprise, and at last exclaimed, in accents of wonder, "May my bridle be too long, and my stirrup too short, Miss Dunbar, if I ever dreamed of jesting with you in earnest, about the old veteran amateur in flirtations, my uncle! That is rather beyond a joke,—and as for the Abbe, you ought to put him down in your private list of detestables, being a bad and dangerous man for young ladies to form an intimacy with. Let me be your father confessor to-night, Miss Dunbar, and tell me when, under his auspices, you mean to take the veil!"
Seeing Agnes become more and more embarrassed, Captain De Crespigny's politeness now induced him to change the subject, though still unable to conjecture any probable cause for her confusion; therefore assuming his usual tone of careless conceit, he added, "Mrs. O'Donoghoe tells me there are two singularly handsome officers in the room to-night; but I cannot see the second. We can be at no loss for No. 1. There is a strange-looking mortal opposite in black! He skips about in the quadrille like an industrious flea! Does it not seem like a frightful dream, that we are expected to find steps for such music as this? What would Monsieur D'Egville say, if he saw me, his favorite pupil, blundering through the figure to such discord?"
"He would still be proud of his scholar! I mistook you for Duvernay last night when you danced with Mrs. O'Donoghoe at the Crown ball. Her dancing-master must have been St. Vitus! She was as light as——"
"As a cork flying from a bottle of champagne! You seem perplexed for once to find a simile!"
"And you are not particularly happy in yours! I have been puzzling my head for the last two seconds who that gold man is opposite in uniform. He looks like a clever caricature of an officer on leave!"
"That is Charleville of ours! Mrs. O'Donoghoe considers him the first of men! almost superhuman! because, as she said to me yesterday, 'he is quite the thing! drives a tandem—rides races in a bonnet and habit—can back his horse down the steepest hill in Low Harrowgate—writes occasionally in the Sporting Magazine—and smokes more cigars in a day than the whole regiment in a week!'"
"There is an officer of that description in every regiment, who is generally called 'Jack' or 'Tom.' I detest these hunting, racing, smoking, and betting men; but you may introduce him to me when the quadrille is over."