"Lots of fellows would give their ears for such a wife," pursued the Ensign. "Lovelace, the Governor's aide-de-camp, bribed the waiter of the hotel to lend him his apron to-day, at dinner, that he might come in and look at her—swears she's a splendid woman, and that he'd run away with such another to-morrow."
Still my grandfather smoked hard, but said nothing, though there was a slight gleam of pride in his countenance.
"Poor thing!" sighed Garry. "All her prospects blighted for ever. Swears she never can love another."
At this my grandfather's eyes grew moist, and he coughed as if he had swallowed some tobacco-smoke.
"And as for me, to have Juana at my lips, as it were, and yet not mine—for she's as inflexible as if she'd been born a Mede and Persian—to know that you are coming between me and happiness as surely as if you were an inexorable father or a cruel guardian—worse, indeed; for those might be evaded. Major, major, have you no compassion!—two days of this will drive me crazy."
The Major changed his pipe from his right hand to his left, and, stretching the former across the table, sympathetically pressed that of the Ensign.
"Do, Major," quoth Garry, changing his flank movement for a direct attack—"do consent to make yourself and me happy; do empower me to negotiate for our all going to church to-morrow." (My grandfather gave a little jump in his chair at this, as if he were sitting on a pin.) "I'll manage it all; you shan't have the least trouble in the matter."
My grandfather spoke not.
"Silence gives consent," said the Ensign, rising. "Come, now, if you don't forbid me, I'll depart on my embassy at once; you needn't speak, I'll spare your blushes. I see this delay has only been from modesty, or perhaps a little ruse on your part. Once, twice, thrice,—I go." And he vanished.
The Major remained in his chair, in the same posture. His pipe was smoked out, but he continued to suck absently at the empty tube. His bewilderment and perturbation were so great that, though he sat up till two in the morning, during which time he smoked eleven pipes, and increased the two glasses of grog with which he was accustomed to prepare for his pillow to four, he was still, when he went to bed, as agitated as ever.