“‘I have been torn from my home and friends by these villains,’ said the young lady, her features glowing with indignation. ‘That wretch would have married me by violence in another hour.’
“‘Confound his impudence!’ said my uncle, bestowing a very contemptuous look on the dying heir of Filletoville.
“‘As you may guess from what you have seen,’ said the young lady, ‘the party were prepared to murder me if I appealed to any one for assistance. If their accomplices find us here, we are lost. Two minutes hence may be too late. The mail!’ With these words, overpowered by her feelings, and the exertion of sticking the young Marquess of Filletoville, she sunk into my uncle’s arms. My uncle caught her up, and bore her to the house-door. There stood the mail, with four long-tailed, flowing-maned, black horses, ready harnessed; but no coachman, no guard, no hostler, even, at the horses’ heads.
“Gentlemen, I hope I do no injustice to my uncle’s memory when I express my opinion, that although he was a bachelor, he had held some ladies in his arms, before this time; I believe, indeed, that he had rather a habit of kissing barmaids; and I know, that in one or two instances, he had been seen, by credible witnesses, to hug a landlady in a very perceptible manner. I mention the circumstance to show what a very uncommon sort of person this beautiful young lady must have been, to have affected my uncle in the way she did; he used to say, that as her long dark hair trailed over his arm, and her beautiful dark eyes fixed themselves upon his face when she recovered, he felt so strange and nervous that his legs trembled beneath him. But, who can look in a sweet soft pair of dark eyes, without feeling queer? I can’t, gentlemen. I am afraid to look at some eyes I know, and that’s the truth of it.
“‘You will never leave me?’ murmured the young lady.
“‘Never,’ said my uncle. And he meant it, too.
“‘My dear preserver!’ exclaimed the young lady. ‘My dear, kind, brave preserver!’
“‘Don’t,’ said my uncle, interrupting her.
“‘Why?’ inquired the young lady.
“‘Because your mouth looks so beautiful when you speak,’ rejoined my uncle, ‘that I’m afraid I shall be rude enough to kiss it.’