“The girl is mad with terror, Borroughcliffe,” cried the colonel, bending his glistening eyes fondly on his niece, “and you will have to furnish my good-for-nothing, gouty old person with a corporal's guard, to watch my nightcap, or the silly child will have an uneasy pillow, till the sun rises once more. But you do not stir, sir?”
“Why should I?” cried the captain; “Miss Plowden yet deigns to keep me company, and it is not in the nature of one of the —th to desert his bottle and his standard at the same moment. For, to a true soldier, the smiles of a lady are as imposing in the parlor as the presence of his colors in the field.”
“I continue undisturbed, Captain Borroughcliffe,” said Katherine, “because I have not been an inhabitant, for so many months, of St. Ruth, and not learned to know the tunes which the wind can play among its chimneys and pointed roofs. The noise which has taken Colonel Howard from his seat, and which has so unnecessarily alarmed my cousin Cicely, is nothing but the Æolian harp of the abbey sounding a double bass.”
The captain fastened on her composed countenance, while she was speaking, a look of open admiration, that brought, though tardily, the color more deeply to her cheeks: and he answered with something extremely equivocal, both in his emphasis and his air:
“I have avowed my allegiance, and I will abide by it. So long as Miss Plowden will deign to bestow her company, so long will she find me among her most faithful and persevering attendants, come who may, or what will.”
“You compel me to retire,” returned Katherine, rising, “whatever may have been my gracious intentions in the matter; for even female vanity must crimson, at an adoration so profound as that which can chain Captain Borroughcliffe to a supper-table! As your alarm has now dissipated, my cousin, will you lead the way? Miss Alice and myself attend you.”
“But not into the paddock, surely, Miss Plowden,” said the captain; “the door, the key of which you have just turned, communicates with the vestibule. This is the passage to the drawing-room.”
The lady faintly laughed, as if in derision of her own forgetfulness, while she bowed her acknowledgment, and moved towards the proper passage: she observed:
“The madness of fear has assailed some, I believe, who have been able to affect a better disguise than Miss Howard.”
“Is it the fear of present danger, or of that which is in reserve?” asked the captain; “but, as you have stipulated so generously in behalf of my worthy host here, and of one, also, who shall be nameless, because he has not deserved such a favor at your hands, your safety shall be one of my especial duties in these times of peril.”