"I think of going to London with my brother, on the Phoebe ."
She was watching him closely: his face brightened wonderfully.
"I vow, you could do nothing better," he said. "There is your world. I've always declared you were a stranger in this far-off land. 'Tis time you found your proper element. I can't help confessing it; 'tis due to you I should confess it—though alas for us whom you leave in New York!"
She looked at him for a moment, with a slight curling of the lip; witnessed his recovery from the fear that she might throw herself upon his care; saw his comfort at being relieved of a possible burden he was not prepared to assume; and then said, very quietly:
"I think Mrs. Russell is coming. You had best go."
With a look of gallant adoration, he made to kiss her hand first. But she drew it away, and put her finger to her lip, as if to bid him depart unheard. When he had left the house, she fell upon the sofa and wept, but only for wounded vanity, for chagrin that she had exposed her heart to one of those gentry who will adore a woman until there is danger of her becoming an embarrassment.
Before long, she arose, and dried her eyes, and went up-stairs to pack her trunks. Thus ended this very light affair of the heart; which had so heavy consequences for so many people.
But Captain Falconer's inward serenity was not to escape with this unexpectedly easy ordeal. When he reached his room, he found me awaiting him, as the representative of Tom Faringfield. I had, in obedience to my sense of duty, put forth a few conventional dissuasions against Tom's fighting the captain; and had presumed to hint that I was nearer to him in years and experience than Tom was. But the boy replied with only a short, bitter laugh at the assured futility of my attempts. Plainly, if there was to be fighting over this matter, I ought not to seek a usurpation of Tom's right. And fighting there would be, I knew, whether I said yea or nay. Since Tom must have a second, that place was mine. And I felt, too, with a young man's foolish faith in poetic justice, that the right must win; that his adversary's superiority in age—and therefore undoubtedly in practice, Falconer being the man he was—would not avail against an honest lad avenging the probity of a sister. And so I yielded countenance to the affair, and went, as soon as my duty permitted, to wait upon Captain Falconer.
"Why," said he, when I had but half told my errand, "I was led to expect this. The young gentleman called me a harsh name, which I'm willing to overlook. But he finds himself aggrieved, and, knowing him as I do, I make no doubt he will not be content till we have a bout or two. If I refuse, he will dog me, I believe, and make trouble for both of us, till I grant him what he asks. So the sooner 'tis done, the better, I suppose. But lookye, Mr. Russell, 'tis sure to be an embarrassing business. If one or other of us should be hurt, there'd be the devil to pay, you know. I dare say the General would be quite obdurate, and go the whole length of the law. There's that to be thought of. Have a glass of wine, and think of it."
Tom and I had already thought of it. We had been longer in New York than the captain had, and we knew how the embarrassment to which he alluded could be provided against.