Natty suddenly drew herself up.
"I think you are mistaken, Captain Cavendish. Catty Clowrie has sense, whatever else she may lack, and never would dream of so preposterous a thing."
"Pardon! it has been my mistake, then. You seem to be all old friends in this place."
"Oh," said Natty, with her gay laugh, "every one knows every one else in Speckport, and a stranger is a marked being at once. Apropos of strangers, what a perfect darling that Miss Rose is."
"How very young-ladylike! Miss Rose does not sound like a family name; has she no other cognomen?"
"Her letter to me was signed W. Rose. I don't know what the 'W' is for. I think she has the sweetest face I ever saw."
"What a lovely night it is?" was Captain Cavendish's somewhat irrelevant answer; and had the moon been shining, Natty might have seen the flush his face wore. Perhaps it was the sea-breeze, though; for it was blowing up fresh and bracing, and a host of stars spangled a sky of cloudless blue. The monotonous plash of the waves on the shore came dully booming over the rattle of their own carriage-wheels.
"What are the wild waves saying? Miss Rose and I have a bond of sympathy between us: we both love the sea. I suppose," said Natty, going off into another subject, "Mrs. Leroy will read me a lecture for my long stay, when I get back."
"Will she not be asleep?"
"Asleep? No, indeed; I believe if I staid out for a week she would never close an eye until I got back."