“My dear Lady Barbara!” a great voice hailed me, as soon as my face had appeared within the door.
Raising my eyes I saw that I was in the presence of a town acquaintance, Captain Grantley. A look assured me that he was here, not in the social capacity of a friend, but in pursuance of his military duties, inasmuch that he wore the red coat of his regiment, and was furnished with a full accoutrement. Greetings exchanged, he said: “Lady Barbara, I am here to interview the Earl on a matter of some gravity. Nothing less, in fact, than that the Marshal at Newcastle is transmitting one of the prisoners lately ta’en, and a very dangerous and important rebel, to Newgate, and as the straightest way is across your moors, I am come here to gain the Earl’s permission to billet eight men and horses on him for this evening.”
“I have no doubt he will grant it readily,” says I, “for are we not aware, my dear Captain, that my papa, the Earl, is the most hopeless Hanoverian in the world?”
“Yet permit me to say, madam,” says the Captain, “that a lady of your sense and penetration I should judge to be quite as hopelessly correct as is her father.”
’Twas a soldier’s way of turning compliments, you will observe, and of so coarse and ill-contrived a nature that I could not resist a reprimand.
“’Tis the most palpable mistake, sir,” I replied; “for utterly as Captain Grantley and my father are in the right, I, sir, am as utterly in error. For, Captain, I would have you know that I am a very rebel, and have shed many a tear for Charlie.”
I smartly beat the carpet with my boot, and gave my head its most indignant altitude. This exhibition of sentiment was but the fruit of my natural contrariety however, as I certainly never had shed a tear for Charlie, and was not likely to. Indeed, I had not a care for politics whatever, and for my life could not have said whether Sir Robert Walpole was a Tory or a Whig. But it amused me mightily to see the deep dismay that overtook the Captain, while he tried to gauge the magnitude of the error of which I had attainted him so falsely. And observing how tenderly my rebuke was felt, I was led to recall some town matters in connection with this gentleman. And considering all things appertaining to the Captain’s case, it was not remarkable that I should arrive at the conclusion that though it might be true enough that he was ostensibly arranging for the billets of men and horses for the night, he had also made this business the occasion of a visit to Barbara Gossiter, to whom he had been upon his knees in a London drawing-room.
CHAPTER II.
THE REBEL APPEARS.
We continued to talk with aimless propriety, until the Captain fetched suddenly so huge a sigh out of the recesses of his waistcoat that it called for an heroic repression of myself to wear a proper gravity of countenance.
“Sir, you are not unwell, I hope,” says I, with perturbation.