"I wish the Captain may never meet with a greater mortification," replied Caroline, laughing; "and I am sure he would be much the better of a few pretty severe ones to keep him in his senses!"
Henry meantime had observed with good-humored surprise, and no small degree of perplexity, the excitement, so disproportioned to the occasion, into which Captain De Crespigny had been thrown by Sir Arthur's remark, but with boyish frankness he instantly went up to him, saying, in a lively and rallying tone,
"I am sure Sir Arthur did not mean anything personal, Captain De Crespigny; but his remark only proves my uncommon skill in assuming a likeness to any one I please. My success in disguising myself at college, was often beyond my intentions or utmost hopes. You would not know me yourself, if I represented an old man, or a French hair-dresser, as I have sometimes done!"
"Indeed!" replied Captain De Crespigny, trying to recover himself, "I should think there was not the dress upon earth in which I would not know you again!"
"Well! some day perhaps, as a beggar, I may, with your leave, beguile you of half-a-crown."
"It would be a clever beggar who succeeded in that! but I defy you there. Half-a-crown! why! I have only as much as that to keep me till midsummer! You have my free leave to try me at any time, or in any way you please, and my pardon for all your success!"
"I can only say," interposed Sir Arthur, "that the impudent rascal brought real tears into my eyes, not long ago, by a story he trumped up at my door, which would have deceived the whole Medicity Society. He can make himself appear as old as myself,—and I declare one day he looked not very unlike your uncle, Lord Doncaster!"
A vivid flush passed over the whole forehead and features of Captain De Crespigny at these words; but assuming a sudden tone of liveliness and vivacity, he summoned Henry to continue their entertainments for the evening, which were to be concluded by acting a proverb of which Sir Arthur and his guests were to discover the design. Miss Smythe, dressed in cottage costume, seated herself pensively on a stool, after which Captain De Crespigny, equipped with a bow in his hand, and carrying on his back a quiver filled with all the old pens in the house, to represent arrows, entered in the character of Love, and was about to aim his darts at the peasant girl, when Henry, disguised in a tattered old cloak, to personate Poverty, limped slowly into the room. On seeing this beggarly apparition, Cupid, pushing his hair up till it stood on end, assumed an expression of comic horror, and with a shriek of dismay, rushed to the window, as if about to jump out.
The whole party laughed heartily, and declared that the denouement of this piece contained a most salutary lesson against a mere love-match; and Sir Arthur said, for his own part he would attend to the warning,—that all portionless young ladies might consider the case hopeless with him, and he trusted every one present intended to be equally prudent!
"Yes! most assuredly!" exclaimed Captain De Crespigny, "I am almost tempted how to take my uncle's advice, and propose to my cousin, Miss Howard, the heiress, though love flies out of the window whenever I think of her. She was a little, pert, red-fingered, flaxen-haired child, when we parted last! The memory of that girl often haunts me like a night-mare since; for my poor mother, on her death-bed, got a promise made about our being married, or something of that kind. I never heard the particulars; but I believe we were to be made acquainted, and refuse one another, before either of us could accept any one else; but I should think there could be little chance of anything that depended on my being refused."