“Show me where it is; come and find it for me. Everything here is in the vilest mess,” cried Carne, growing reckless with wrath and hurry. “I want the despatch of this morning, and I find tailors' bills, way to make water-proof blacking, a list of old women, and a stump of old pipe! Come here, this instant, and show me where it is.”
“If you forget your good manners,” answered Dolly, still keeping in the dark near the door, “I shall have to leave you. Surely you have practice enough in spying, to find what you want, with two candles.”
Carne turned for a moment, and stared at her. Her attitude surprised him, but he could not believe in her courage to rebel. She stood with her back to the door, and met his gaze without a sign of fear.
“There are no official papers here,” he said, after another short ransack; “there must have been some, if this desk is the one. Have you dared to delude me by showing the wrong desk?”
Dolly met his gaze still, and then walked towards him. The band had struck up, and the company were singing with a fine patriotic roar, which rang very nobly in the distance—“Britannia, rule the waves!” Dolly felt like a Briton as the words rolled through her, and the melody lifted her proud heart.
“You have deluded yourself,” she said, standing proudly before the baffled spy; “you have ransacked my father's private desk, which I allowed you to do, because my father has no secrets. He leaves it open half the time, because he is a man of honour. He is not a man of plots, and wiles, and trickery upon women. And you have deluded yourself, in dreaming that a daughter of his would betray her Country.”
“By the God that made me, I will have your life!” cried Carne in French, as he dashed his hand under his coat to draw his dagger; but the pressure of the desk had displaced that, so that he could not find it. She thought that her time was come, and shrieked—for she was not at all heroic, and loved life very dearly—but she could not take her eyes from his, nor turn to fly from the spell of them; all she could do was to step back; and she did so into her father's arms.
“Ho!” cried the Admiral, who had entered with the smile of good cheer and good company glowing on his fine old countenance; “my Dolly and a stranger at my private desk! Mr. Carne! I have had a glass or two of wine, but my eyes must be playing me extraordinary tricks. A gentleman searching my desk, and apparently threatening my dear daughter! Have the kindness to explain, before you attempt to leave us.”
If the curtain had not been drawn across the window, Carne would have made his escape, and left the situation to explain itself. But the stuff was thick, and it got between his legs; and before he could slip away, the stout old Admiral had him by the collar with a sturdy grasp, attesting the substance of the passing generation. And a twinkle of good-humour was in the old eyes still—such a wonder was his Dolly that he might be doing wrong in laying hands of force upon a visitor of hers. Things as strange as this had been within his knowledge, and proved to be of little harm—with forbearance. But his eyes grew stern, as Carne tried to dash his hand off.
“If you value your life, you will let me go,” said the young man to the old one.