The veteran turned to the speaker of this unexpected address, and listened with profound attention. When she had done, he replied, with a good deal of softness in his tones:
“Ah! provoking one! you know me too well, to doubt my forgiveness; but duty must be attended to, though even a young lady's smiles tempt me to remain. Yes, yes, child, you, too, are the daughter of a very brave and worthy seaman; but you carry your attachment to that profession too far, Miss Plowden—you do, indeed you do.”
Katherine might have faintly blushed; but the slight smile, which mingled with the expression of her shame, gave to her countenance a look of additional archness, and she laid her hand lightly on the sleeve of her guardian, to detain him, as she replied:
“Yet why leave us, Colonel Howard? It is long since we have seen you in the cloisters, and you know you come as a father; tarry, and you may yet add confessor to the title.”
“I know thy sins already, girl,” said the worthy colonel, unconsciously yielding to her gentle efforts to lead him back to his seat; “they are, deadly rebellion in your heart to your prince, a most inveterate propensity to salt water, and a great disrespect to the advice and wishes of an old fellow whom your father's will and the laws of the realm have made the guardian of your person and fortune.”
“Nay, say not the last, dear sir,” cried Katherine; “for there is not a syllable you have ever said to me on that foolish subject, that I have forgotten. Will you resume your seat again? Cecilia, Colonel Howard consents to take his coffee with us.”
“But you forget the three men, honest Kit there, and our respectable guest, Captain Borroughcliffe.”
“Let honest Kit stay there, if he please; you may send a request to Captain Borroughcliffe to join our party; I have a woman's curiosity to see the soldier; and as for the three men—” she paused, and affected to muse a moment, when she continued, as if struck by an obvious thought—“yes, and the men can be brought in and examined here; who knows but they may have been wrecked in the gale, and need our pity and assistance, rather than deserve your suspicions.”
“There is a solemn warning in Miss Plowden's conjecture, that should come home to the breasts of all who live on this wild coast,” said Alice Dunscombe; “I have known many a sad wreck among the hidden shoals, and when the wind has blown but a gentle gale, compared to last night's tempest. The wars, and the uncertainties of the times, together with man's own wicked passions, have made great havoc with those who knew well the windings of the channels among the 'Ripples.' Some there were who could pass, as I have often heard, within a fearful distance of the 'Devil's Grip,' the darkest night that ever shadowed England; but all are now gone of that daring set, either by the hand of death, or, what is even as mournful, by unnatural banishment from the land of their fathers.”
“This war has then probably drawn off most of them, for your recollections must be quite recent, Miss Alice,” said the veteran; “as many of them were engaged in the business of robbing his majesty's revenue, the country is in some measure requited for the former depredations, by their present services, and at the same time it is happily rid of their presence. Ah! madam, ours is a glorious constitution, where things are so nicely balanced, that, as in the physical organization of a healthy, vigorous man, the baser parts are purified in the course of things, by its own wholesome struggles.”