No. One set of dishes followed another set of dishes, and nothing in the shape of a personal revelation took place. The conversation halted on irregularly, between public affairs on one side and trifling private topics on the other. Politics, home and foreign, took their turn with the small household history of St. Crux; the leaders of the revolution which expelled Louis Philippe from the throne of France marched side by side, in the dinner-table review, with old Mazey and the dogs. The dessert was put on the table, the old sailor came in, drank his loyal toast, paid his respects to “Master George,” and went out again. Magdalen followed him, on her way back to the servants’ offices, having heard nothing in the conversation of the slightest importance to the furtherance of her own design, from the first word of it to the last. She struggled hard not to lose heart and hope on the first day. They could hardly talk again to-morrow, they could hardly talk again the next day, of the French Revolution and the dogs. Time might do wonders yet; and time was all her own.
Left together over their wine, the uncle and nephew drew their easy-chairs on either side of the fire; and, in Magdalen’s absence, began the very conversation which it was Magdalen’s interest to hear.
“Claret, George?” said the admiral, pushing the bottle across the table. “You look out of spirits.”
“I am a little anxious, sir,” replied George, leaving his glass empty, and looking straight into the fire.
“I am glad to hear it,” rejoined the admiral. “I am more than a little anxious myself, I can tell you. Here we are at the last days of March—and nothing done! Your time comes to an end on the third of May; and there you sit, as if you had years still before you, to turn round in.”
George smiled, and resignedly helped himself to some wine.
“Am I really to understand, sir,” he asked, “that you are serious in what you said to me last November? Are you actually resolved to bind me to that incomprehensible condition?”
“I don’t call it incomprehensible,” said the admiral, irritably.
“Don’t you, sir? I am to inherit your estate, unconditionally—as you have generously settled it from the first. But I am not to touch a farthing of the fortune poor Noel left you unless I am married within a certain time. The house and lands are to be mine (thanks to your kindness) under any circumstances. But the money with which I might improve them both is to be arbitrarily taken away from me, if I am not a married man on the third of May. I am sadly wanting in intelligence, I dare say, but a more incomprehensible proceeding I never heard of!”
“No snapping and snarling, George! Say your say out. We don’t understand sneering in Her Majesty’s Navy!”