“Well, then, I will! since you keep pressing me. There, let me go; I must be alone; I must tell the sea how unjust I was, and how happy I am, and when you see me again you shall see the better side of your cousin Barbara.”
She was peremptory. “She had her folly and his merits to think over,” she said; but she promised to pass through Newhaven, and he should put her into her pony-phaeton, which would meet her there.
Lady Barbara was only a fool by the excess of her wit over her experience; and Lord Ipsden's love was not misplaced, for she had a great heart which she hid from little people. I forgive her!
The resolutions she formed in company with the sea, having dismissed Ipsden, and ordered her flunky into the horizon, will probably give our viscount just half a century of conjugal bliss.
As he was going she stopped him and said: “Your friend had browner hands than I have hitherto conceived possible. To tell the truth, I took them for the claws of a mahogany table when he grappled you—is that the term? C'est e'gal—I like him—”
She stopped him again. “Ipsden, in the midst of all this that poor man's ship is broken. I feel it is! You will buy him another, if you really love me—for I like him.”
And so these lovers parted for a time; and Lord Ipsden with a bounding heart returned to Newhaven. He went to entertain his late vis-'a-vis at the “Peacock.”
Meantime a shorter and less pleasant rencontre had taken place between Leith and that village.
Gatty felt he should meet his lost sweetheart; and sure enough, at a turn of the road Christie and Jean came suddenly upon him.
Jean nodded, but Christie took no notice of him; they passed him; he turned and followed them, and said, “Christie!”