CHAPTER X.
PAULINE STILL INCORRIGIBLE.
Sir Oswald lingered over his wine. It was not every day that he found a companion so entirely to his taste as Captain Langton. The captain had a collection of anecdotes of the court, the aristocracy, and the mess-room, that could not be surpassed. He kept his own interest well in view the whole time, making some modest allusions to the frequency with which his society was sought, and the number of ladies who were disposed to regard him favorably. All was narrated with the greatest skill, without the least boasting, and Sir Oswald, as he listened with delight, owned to himself that, all things considered, he could not have chosen more wisely for his niece.
A second bottle of fine old port was discussed, and then Sir Oswald said:
"You will like to go to the drawing-room; the ladies will be there. I always enjoy forty winks after dinner."
The prospect of a tete-a-tete with Miss Darrell did not strike the captain as being a very rapturous one.
"She is," he said to himself, "a magnificently handsome girl, but almost too haughty to be bearable. I have never, in all my life, felt so small as I do when she speaks to me or looks at me, and no man likes that sort of thing."
But Darrell Court was a magnificent estate, the large annual income was a sum he had never even dreamed of, and all might be his—Sir Oswald had said so; his, if he could but win the proud heart of the proudest girl it had ever been his fortune to meet. The stake was well worth going through something disagreeable for.