“But you have not yet told me who he is.”
“Oh, you would not know if I were to tell you! though if you ever see him, you will never fail to know him thenceforth!”
“His name? You’ve raised my curiosity.”
“Philip Helmstedt, my cousin! He is of those fierce and haughty Helmstedts of the Eastern Shore, whose forefathers, you know, claimed a prior right to the coast and the Isles of the Bay, from having made the place a sort of freebooting depot, long before the king’s patent endowed Lord Baltimore with it, and who headed so many rebellions and caused so much bloodshed among the early colonists.”
“Well, nearly two hundred years have rolled by. This fierce, arrogant nature must have been greatly modified by time and intermarriage.”
“Must it. Well, now, it is my opinion that no one who knows the history can look upon Philip Helmstedt’s bird-of-prey profile without remembering the fierce fights by sea and land of his freebooting forefathers.”
“It is doubtless true that a strong and powerful race of men may have so impressed upon their descendants as to leave their own peculiar traits unmodified and predominant to the latest generations,” said Marguerite, musing; and then, suddenly recollecting herself, she exclaimed: “Philip Helmstedt! surely I have heard that name in honorable association before, though I have never met the owner. Oh! by the way, is he not that gallant nephew, of whom I have heard your father speak, and who, though but thirteen years of age, followed him in the battle of Yorktown and performed such prodigies of youthful valor?”
“Oh, yes! he’s fire-eater enough, and a terror in general, at least to me.”
“But where has he been that I have never met him in society?”
“Oh! he has been for a number of years studying at Heidelburg, and traveling all over the Eastern Continent. I was sufficiently afraid of him before he went away, and I am twice as much in awe of him since he came back; so I want you to veto him, Marguerite; for you may do so, and then the colonel will get somebody else to stand up in his stead. Will you?”