"I am so sorry—I did not mean—you know what I am, Auntie."
"My dear, I know what you are, and therefore it is that I love you so. Now go and wash your pretty eyes, and read that again to me, and to the Colonel. Many mothers would be proud perhaps. I feel no pride whatever, because my son could not help doing it."
There was something else this excellent lady's son could not help doing. He caught the beautiful maid of Sker in her pure white dress in a nook of the passage, and with tears of pride for him rolling from her dark grey eyes, and he could not help—but all lovers, I trow, know how much to expect of him.
"Thank you, Rodney," Delushy cried; "to a certain extent, I am grateful. But, if you please, no more of it. And you need not suppose that I was crying about, about,—about anything."
"Of course not, you darling. How long have I lived, not to know that girls cry about nothing? nine times out of ten at least. Pearly tears, now prove your substance."
"Rodney, will you let me alone? I am not a French decker of 500 guns, for you to do just what you like with. And I don't believe any one knows you are here. Yes, yes, yes! Ever so many darlings, if you like—and 'with my whole heart I do love you,' as darling Moxy says. But one thing, this moment, I insist upon—no, not in your ear, nor yet through your hair, you conceited curly creature; but at the distance of a yard I pronounce that you shall come to your mother."
"Oh, what a shame!" And with that unfilial view of the subject, he rendered himself, after all those mortal perils, into the arms of his mother. With her usual quickness Delushy fled, but came back to the drawing-room very sedately, and with a rose-coloured change of dress, in about half an hour afterwards.
"How do you do, Captain Rodney Bluett?"
"Madam, I hope that I see you well."