Captain De Crespigny fixed his eyes with stern contempt upon his free and easy companion, who passed his fingers through his long bushy wig, stretched his legs upon the sofa, and spoke with a yawning voice, while he added in a careless off-hand way, "If my cousin could only be persuaded you meant nothing from first to last, there's an ensign in the 42d, with very good prospects, she might have for the asking! Here is a paper. I prepared it in case you might object to the match; and if you'll only sign this assurance that you meant nothing, for the lady's own satisfaction, you are a free man. It will save us both a deal of bother and fighting. A man who has fought a dozen times like me, may go out once too often; and my pistols are all at Dublin!"
Captain De Crespigny paused a moment, irresolute what to do. It was a condescension quite intolerable to have another moment's intercourse with such a man, and to sign any paper at his request, seemed almost a degradation; but then he saw before him a long vista of vulgar annoyance from this forward Irishman. He was aware that hundreds of gentlemen would laugh if the story got any publicity, and that dozens of young ladies would feel themselves aggrieved if it became circulated that his attentions had been so very marked to an obscure Miss Smythe.
The tea-tables, the newspapers, the club, and the mess, were all to be dreaded; and seeing that the Irishman had, with an air of perfect nonchalance, buried himself behind a double number of the "Times," which he seemed to be attentively reading, Captain De Crespigny glanced his eye over the paper, and finding that it contained only a short and simple declaration that he never had intended to marry the young lady introduced to him by Sir Charles Dunbar, he hastily signed his name, tossed the paper contemptuously across the table, and with infinite dignity, strode out of the house.
Great was his surprise, when descending the staircase, to hear, in the room he had so recently left a simultaneous burst of smothered laughter from several persons. He could not be mistaken! It seemed even as if there were female voices in the number; but almost bewildered with anger, and happy also to escape, he hastened onwards, threw himself on horseback, and galloped for three hours before he had regained any portion of his usual equanimity.
Had Captain De Crespigny followed his first impulse, on hearing the laughter behind him, it would have been to retrace his steps and re-enter the drawing-room of Mrs. Smythe, when his astonishment would certainly not have been small to see Henry De Lancey laughingly disencumbering himself of his whiskers, wig, and mustachios, while Mrs. Smith exclaimed, in accents of almost convulsive risibility,
"Well done, my adopted nephew! You deserve to be my heir! I have often heard that my old aversion Louis De Crespigny's exploits were inimitable in his line; but we needed such a specimen as this. I bestow the fright upon him with all the pleasure in life!"
"I only hope, if we ever, in the course of years, meet again, that my cousin will not recognise me," added Caroline, smiling. "It was not particularly flattering to see Louis in so much alarm! Yesterday, however, when he saw me last, I was certainly looking my very worst."
"Your worst is better than the best of anybody else," exclaimed Henry, in a tone so exactly resembling that of Captain De Crespigny, that Mrs. Smythe started, and looked round with alarm; while Caroline and young De Lancey burst into a simultaneous laugh of frolicsome glee, and continued the dialogue during several minutes, with great spirit and vivacity, till Henry suddenly became conscious, that in imagining the words of another, he was gradually betrayed into expressing his own real feelings, and that, too, with a depth and fervor which sincerity alone could have dictated.
Checking himself in a moment, while the color rushed to his face, dyeing it red to the very roots of his hair, and instantly receded again, he took a hurried leave of Mrs. Smythe, and turning to Caroline with a quivering lip, he said, in a voice which none but herself could hear, "I must not say in jest what I feel in earnest! Farewell! There are wishes known only to my own heart, and never to be realized, which I must try to forget. You go to-morrow, and we shall probably meet no more! Forgive me, then, if I say, that so long as I live you shall be first in my most respectful and devoted affections; and death only can ever make me forget you."
Before Henry left the ante-room, being in search of his hat, he found it laid beside an open portfolio on the table, which, having, in his haste, accidentally thrown down, he began hastily collecting its contents, when his surprise was great, on turning up one sheet of the drawing paper, to find there a finely-executed sketch, done with all the skill and spirit of an accomplished artist, representing the venerable head of Sir Arthur; and on the same paper—could it be possible!—an almost living representation of himself. The likeness very much flattered, he thought—exceedingly flattered; but still it could be no other; and the picture dropped from his hand in the transport of his delight.