“Old gentlewomen!” repeated Clifton slowly, with a musing smile, adding—“Georgia is about seventeen years of age, and the most beautiful woman in the world!”
“Whe-e-e-ew! I’m amazed! I’m confounded! I’m stunned! Then—the present Mrs. Clifton is the second wife?”
“No, sir—Georgia is my uncle’s fourth wife.”
“Overwhelmed!—annihilated!” exclaimed the young man. “The—the—old Blue-beard! the old Henry VIII.! Four wives! Are they all living?—if not, where does he bury his dead?”
“Fairfax!” exclaimed Captain Clifton, in a tone, and with a look, that speedily recalled the young man to himself—then he added, rather haughtily—“My Uncle Clifton is a simple, gentle-hearted old man, excessively fond of women, but mark you, sir!—it is the affection of the patriarch, not of the pacha.”
“Hang me if ever I saw any difference between Solomon the king, and Solimaun the caliph; Abraham the patriarch, and Aroun the pacha, in that respect,” laughed the young man, until, stealing a furtive glance at the cold and haughty face of Clifton, he held out his hand, and suddenly exclaimed—“Pardon me, Clifton! or call me out! I—can’t help a jest, to save my soul! but I’ll fight or apologize, or render any other sort of satisfaction afterwards!”
Captain Clifton remembered that Francis Fairfax was his guest, going to spend a long mid-summer furlough at his mother’s house, and so he cleared his brow and answered—
“Nonsense!”
“Now tell me about Henry VIII.’s fourth Queen—how long has she been married—I mean the present Mrs. Clifton?”
“About two years. My uncle wedded her when she was fifteen—she is now seventeen—and, as I said, the most beautiful creature that you, or I, or any one else, ever did, or ever shall see, anywhere.”