“What method?” demands George, stamping his foot.
“Why, of laying an information, to be sure!” says Mr. Jack; on which George burst forth into language much too violent for us to repeat here, and highly uncomplimentary to Miss Lydia.
“Don't utter such words, sir!” cried the parson, who, as it seemed, now took his turn to be angry. “Do not insult, in my hearing, the most charming, the most innocent of her sex! If she has been mistaken in her information regarding you, and doubted your willingness to commit what, after all, is a crime—for a crime homicide is, and of the most awful description—you, sir, have no right to blacken that angel's character with foul words: and, innocent yourself, should respect the most innocent as she is the most lovely of women! Oh, George, are you to be my brother?”
“I hope to have that honour,” answered George, smiling. He began to perceive the other's drift.
“What, then, what—though 'tis too much bliss to be hoped for by sinful man—what, if she should one day be your sister? Who could see her charms without being subjugated by them? I own that I am a slave. I own that those Latin Sapphics in the September number of the Gentleman's Magazine, beginning Lydicae quondam cecinit venustae (with an English version by my friend Hickson of Corpus), were mine. I have told my mother what hath passed between us, and Mrs. Lambert also thinks that the most lovely of her sex has deigned to look favourably on me. I have composed a letter—she another. She proposes to wait on Miss Lydia's grandpapa this very day, and to bring me the answer, which shall make me the happiest or the most wretched of men! It was in the unrestrained intercourse of family conversation that I chanced to impart to my father the sentiments which my dear girl had uttered. Perhaps I spoke slightingly of your courage, which I don't doubt—by Heaven, I don't doubt: it may be, she has erred, too, regarding you. It may be that the fiend jealousy has been gnawing at my bosom, and—horrible suspicion!—that I thought my sister's lover found too much favour with her I would have all my own. Ah, dear George, who knows his faults? I am as one distracted with passion. Confound it, sir! What right have you to laugh at me? I would have you to know that risu inepto.”
“What, have you two boys made it up?” cries the General, entering at this moment, in the midst of a roar of laughter from George.
“I was giving my opinion to Mr. Warrington upon laughter, and upon his laughter in particular,” says Jack Lambert, in a fume.
“George is bound over to keep the peace, Jack! Thou canst not fight him for two years; and between now and then, let us trust you will have made up your quarrel. Here is dinner, boys! We will drink absent friends, and an end to the war, and no fighting out of the profession!”
George pleaded an engagement, as a reason for running away early from his dinner; and Jack must have speedily followed him, for when the former, after transacting some brief business at his own lodgings, came to Mr. Van den Bosch's door, in Bloomsbury Square, he found the young parson already in parley with a servant there. “His master and mistress had left town yesterday,” the servant said.
“Poor Jack! And you had the decisive letter in your pocket?” George asked of his future brother-in-law.