“Oh yes, I have!” sighed the General.
“Bless you!” she exclaimed enthusiastically; “I thought you would recall the days of your youth and feel for us; and when you see my dear Harry”—
“With a cork leg”—
“Ay, or with two cork legs—you will I know be convinced that my happiness is as secure as your own.”
“Women are riddles, one and all!” said the General, “and I should have known that before.”
“Oh! do not say such cruel things and disappoint me, depending as I have been on your kindness and affection. Hark!” she continued, “I hear my aunt’s footstep: now dear, dear General, reason coolly with her—my very existence depends on it. If you only knew him! Promise, do promise, that you will use your influence, all-powerful as it is, to save my life.”
She raised her beautiful eyes, swimming in unshed tears, to his; she called him her uncle, her dear noble-hearted friend; she rested her snowy hand lovingly, imploringly on his shoulder, and even murmured a hope that, her aunt’s consent once gained, it might not be impossible to have the two weddings on the same day.
The General may have dreaded the banter of sundry members of the “Senior United Service Club,” who had already jested much at his devotion to the two Isabels; he may have felt a generous desire to make two young people happy, and his good sense doubtless suggested that sixty-five and seventeen bear a strong affinity to January and May; he certainly did himself honor, by adopting the interests of a brave young officer as his own, and avoided the banter of “the club,” by pledging his thrice-told vows to his “old love,” the same bright morning that his “new love” gave her heart and hand to Henry Mandeville.