“I will take them all, my lad,” cried Giles, throwing him a guinea. The fellow gaped for a moment, and then made off as fast as his legs could carry him. I wondered what Giles meant to do with the birds. He held the cage in his hand until we had started and were well into the country; then, opening the little slide, he took out one poor, fluttering bird, and, poising on his finger for a moment, the lark flew upward with a rush of joyous wings.
Each bird he liberated in the same way, all of us on the coach-top watching him in silence. As the last captive disappeared in the blue heavens, Giles, crushing the cage in his strong hands, threw it away.
“I have been a prisoner for fourteen months,” he said, “and I shall never see any harmless living thing again imprisoned without trying to set it free.”
We reached London that night, and Giles went to his old lodgings, where his landlady was delighted to see him, as all women were who knew Giles Vernon. She gave us supper, and then we sat up all night talking. I had thought from the guinea he had thrown the vender of larks, that he had money. I found he had none, or next to none.
“And how I am to live until I get another ship, I am at a loss, my boy,” he cried, quite cheerfully. “Two courses are open to me—play and running away with an heiress. Do you know of a charming girl, Dicky, with something under a hundred thousand pounds, who could be reconciled to a penniless lieutenant in his Majesty’s navy? And remember, she must be as beautiful as the dawn besides, and of good family, and keen of wit—no lunkhead of a woman for me.” To this, fate impelled me to reply that Lady Arabella Stormont was still single.
“Faith!” cried Giles, slapping his knee, “she is the girl for me. I always intended to marry her, if only to spite her.”
I was sorry I had raked up the embers of his passion of five years before, and attempted to cover my step by saying,—
“She is still infatuated with Overton, whom, however, she sees rarely, and that only at the houses of others; but he has ever looked coldly upon her.”
“She’ll not be coldly looked on by me. And let me see; there is her cousin you used to tell me about,—the Carmichael girl,—suppose you, Dicky, run away with her; then no two lieutenants in the service will have more of the rhino than we!”
I declare this was the very first time I had remembered Daphne’s thirty thousand pounds. She had the same fortune as Lady Arabella. The reflection damped my spirits dreadfully.