"I have just seen the colonel," answered Worcester, "and acquainted him with the sentence."
"Well," I exclaimed in much anxiety.
"Why, Colonel Quintin has astonished us all, by declaring that he should not inflict one quarter of the sentence pronounced by the court-martial against the young soldier."
"What reason did he give?"
"Merely," answered Worcester, "that the man was young in the first place, and, in the second, that he hated the system of flogging altogether, believing it to be a punishment most of all calculated to harden the men."
"I will forgive Colonel Quintin his dislike of me for that one sentiment," said I.
In order to quiet the anxiety of the Duke of Beaufort, I absolutely insisted on Lord Worcester going occasionally into society; but, when he did comply with my earnest desire to this effect, he always left me with the reluctance of a school-boy, on setting off to his dull, dry, daily school.
One day, when Worcester dined with Lord Charles Somerset, he said that several carriages would be passing my door on their way from his uncle's, so that he should not require any equipage of his own to return in. It was a rainy, wretched night, and I was greatly surprised when Worcester, in his full dress regimentals, without a cloak or a great coat, came home on foot absolutely wet to the skin!
"Lady Aldborough offered me a seat in her barouche," said Worcester, "and we were altogether six, just about to drive from the door, when that widow, Lady Emily ——, I forget her other name, who, everybody says, is dying for a husband, begged that we would make room for her too, and she got into the coach without waiting for an answer. 'I must not crowd you all,' said her ladyship; 'indeed I prefer sitting on Lord Worcester's knee, to putting the ladies to the least inconvenience.'"
Worcester's virtue having taken the alarm, he insisted on its being quite impossible for him to intrude an instant longer, and rather than submit to such contamination as to consent that a fine woman should sit on his knee, he preferred submitting his best and gayest uniform to the pelting storm; for which want of gallantry he was rated by Lady Aldborough for the next fortnight.