"So I am wrong, you think, my lady mother?"
"Decidedly; but I trust that time will put all right. I do not despair."
"Neither do I, be assured," said he, with one of his strange smiles.
"The silly girl, of course, felt flattered by your offer?"
"Not at all—one might think such matters were of daily occurrence with her."
"Did she make no consideration of our family and its antiquity?" she asked, bridling up.
"My dear mother, it seems to be of very little importance to Flora Warrender whether the said family flourished at the court of old King Cole, from whose grave Kyle takes its name, or at that of his Majesty of the Cannibal Islands; at all events, she won't have me. Confound it!" he exclaimed, as if talking to himself; "to think that I, almost the pattern man of the Household Brigade—chosen by many a proud peeress to squire her through the crush of the opera; by the fighting men of the corps as their second in every affair of honour; by the Prince Regent to arrange his déjeuners, afternoon receptions, and crack suppers; I, the star of Fops' Alley—deemed the best stroke at billiards in London—the best hand on a tiller at Cowes, or to pull the bow-oar to Richmond; chosen to ride the most vicious brutes at Epsom and Melton, and who can hit a guinea at twenty yards with a saw-handle and a hair-trigger—that I, I say, should be outflanked by a country booby passes my comprehension, unless, as in old King James's days, there be witchcraft again in the Bailiwick of Carrick! To be jockeyed by a country lout and a lass of eighteen—deucedly disgusting! Thank heaven! this can never be known in town, or how would the lady-killing Cosmo be roasted! I think I hear Paget of the Hussars, and the rest of our set laughing over it; and, by Jove, they would laugh too, until I had one or two of them out at Chalk Farm for a morning appetiser."
"How this little rebuff nettles you! Take courage, Cosmo," said his mother, almost laughing at his angry and odd enumeration of his many good qualities.
"Well, I have changed my mind many times; so do women, and so may Flora. This is a boy's love; she will tire of his idea, and then is my time to cut in and win in a canter. You, my dear mother, yourself once loved, before my father proposed——"
"Stay," said Lady Rohallion, interrupting, with sudden agitation, and hastening angrily to change the unwelcome topic; "a sudden light breaks upon me! Cosmo, on the night you arrived, it seemed to me you spoke very oddly of Flora Warrender and Quentin Kennedy."