“Me?—with Mr. Hastings?”
“Yes! and I regret it did not happen! You may recollect my mentioning my original acquaintance with him, before I lived where I now do.”
“Yes, but where you now... I understand you,—expect ere long you may see him!”
He meant from his acquittal, and reception at the Queen’s house. And I would not contradict him.
“But, however,” I continued, “my acquaintance and regard began very fairly while I lived at home at my father’s and indeed I regret you could not then and so have known him, as I am satisfied you would have been pleased with him, which now you cannot judge. He is so gentle-mannered, so intelligent, so unassuming, yet so full-minded.”
“I have understood that,” he answered; “yet ’tis amazing how little unison there may be between mariners and characters, and how softly gentle a man may appear without, whose nature within is all ferocity and cruelty. This is a part of mankind of which you cannot judge—of which, indeed, you can scarce form an idea.”
After a few comments I continued what I had to say, which, in fact, was nothing but another malice of my own against him. I reminded him of one day in a former year of this trial, when I had the happiness of sitting at it with my dearest Mrs. Locke, in which he had been so obliging, with reiterated offers, as to propose seeing for my servant, etc.—
“Well,” I continued, “I was afterwards extremely sorry I had not accepted your kindness; for just as we were going away, who should be passing, and turn back to speak to me, but Mr. Hastings! ‘O!’ he cried, ‘I must come here to see you, I find!’ Now, had you but been with me at that moment! I own it would have been the greatest pleasure to me to have brought you together though I am quite at a loss to know whether I ought, in that case, to have presented you to each other.”
He laughed most heartily,-half, probably, with joy at his escape; but he had all his wits about him in his answer. “If you,” he cried, “had been between US, we might, for once, have coalesced—in both bowing to the same shrine!”