This subject was not revived, till, the tobacco-hunger proving too strong for him, my friend Romeo began to fidget, and finally rose.
“I say, Doctor, you won't tell the governor—it would put him in an awful fume?”
“What do you mean?”
“Oh—about Miss ———— you know. I've been a great ass, I suppose, but when a girl is so civil to one—a fine girl, too—you saw her, did you not, dancing with me? Now isn't she an uncommonly fine girl?”
I assented.
“And that Granton should get her, confound him! a great logger-headed country clown.”
“Who is an honest man, and will make her a kind husband. Any other honest man who does not mean to offer himself as her husband, had much better avoid her acquaintance.”
Treherne coloured again; I saw he understood me, though he turned it off with a laugh.
“You're preaching matrimony, Doctor, surely. What an idea! to tie myself up at my age. I shan't do the ungentlemanly thing either. So good-night, old fellow.”
He lounged out, with that lazy, self-satisfied air which is misnamed aristocratic. Yet I have seen many a one of these conceited, effeminate-looking, drawing-room darlings, a curled and scented modern Alcibiades, fight—like Alcibiades; and die—as no Greek ever could die—like a Briton.