"Do you want to know who he is?" shrieked Archy, joyfully. "Do you want to know, I say? He is Captain Paul Jones, of the continental navy—so much for his rank; and as for his birth, he is the son of a gardener. O-oo-ooh!" Archy's yells of rapturous laughter fairly made the roof ring, and it was so infectious that even Lord Bellingham burst into a cackle—the nearest approach he ever made to audible laughter.
But it was no laughing matter to Mary and Isabel. They sat as if paralyzed, looking blankly at each other, and quite stunned by the magnitude of the mistake they had made. Mary gasped out:
"Paul—"
And Isabel added, faintly:
"Jones."
And then, unable to stand the laughter, in which even their mother joined, while Colonel Baskerville haw-hawed openly, they flung out of the hall and rushed up to their rooms, where, locked in each other's arms, they wept bitterly from pure chagrin.
All this was bliss to Archy, but serious thoughts were lurking in his mind. He took the first opportunity to speak to Colonel Baskerville alone without attracting observation—and that opportunity did not come until bedtime, in the Colonel's own room. Then he repeated what Paul Jones had told him of Langton's illness.
"Poor lad! poor lad!" said Colonel Baskerville, pacing the floor. "I never saw him, but in my heart I love him. I think, with you, it is best not to tell his mother of this new anxiety, but it would be well to let Lord Bellingham know. As Captain Paul Jones says, the Duc de Crillon is most chivalrous in permitting communications with the garrison at Gibraltar respecting individuals, and there might be means, through Lord Bellingham's influence at the Admiralty, to find out something about Langton."
Next morning all the members of the household were surprised when they found that Lord Bellingham's solicitor had arrived from York at an early hour. Archy surmised that the solicitor had been sent for in regard to making Lord Bellingham's will, and was not surprised, during the course of the afternoon, to be invited to his grandfather's room. Lord Bellingham thought he had made up his mind to make Langton his sole heir, but Archy had so won upon his pride and ambition, which took the place of a heart with him, that he could not forbear one last appeal to him.