"He can control himself," said Captain Acton. "Did you observe, Lucy, that he refused all refreshments last night? Now, a man who is radically and incurably a sot cannot view a decanter of anything to drink, and the stronger the worse, without thirsting for it. And did ever such a man say no to an invitation to drink with the liquor standing up in a bottle in front of him?"
"I am sure he is a man of resolution," said Lucy. "I never look at him without seeming to see why it is he should be so gallant and desperate a fighter at sea. He has a cast of face that is very uncommon, full of power of thought, and the shape of his head is like that Greek bust in the library. How is it that a man with his spirit is unable to deny himself what he knows must speedily bring him to ruin?"
"It is not only drink," said Miss Acton. "They tell me he is accustomed to bet very heavily."
"He will mend. He shall have a chance," said Captain Acton cheerily. "I love his old father, and I am strongly disposed to like his son; and I am an ill judge of human nature if I am wrong in predicting that the command I have given him will lead to his reformation. I have ever found it true that the way to make a man honest is to let him understand that you have a cordial faith in his good intentions. He must be a black-hearted rogue beyond hope who disappoints the high and reassuring expectations you give him to know you have formed of him."
"Mr Lawrence has a beautiful voice," said Lucy. "How touchingly he sang 'Tom Bowling'!"
"I could love him for his way of singing 'Sally in our Alley,'" said Miss Acton. "But the song in his mouth has not the moving sweetness papa gave it."
At this moment Captain Acton cried out, halting as he uttered the words with his eyes fixed in the direction of Old Harbour: "Bless my soul! what can have happened? Is the French Flotilla in sight?"
"The French Flotilla!" exclaimed Miss Acton. "In sight, do you say?"
"What can be the meaning of it?" said Captain Acton.
"What do you see? The French Flotilla?" cried Miss Acton in a voice tremulous with agitation. She darted her eyes through her glasses over the sea.