As handsome, slender Captain Devereux, with his dark face, and great, strange, earnest eyes, and that look of intelligence so racy and peculiar, that gave him a sort of enigmatical interest, stepped into the fair-green, the dark blue glance of poor Nan Glynn, of Palmerstown, from under her red Sunday riding-hood, followed the tall, dashing, graceful apparition with a stolen glance of wild loyalty and admiration.  Poor Nan! with thy fun and thy rascalities, thy strong affections and thy fatal gift of beauty, where does thy head rest now?

Handsome Captain Devereux!—­Gipsy Devereux, as they called him for his clear dark complexion—­was talking a few minutes later to Lilias Walsingham.  Oh, pretty Lilias—­oh, true lady—­I never saw the pleasant crayon sketch that my mother used to speak of, but the tradition of thee has come to me—­so bright and tender, with its rose and violet tints, and merry, melancholy dimples, that I see thee now, as then, with the dew of thy youth still on thee, and sigh as I look, as if on a lost, early love of mine.

‘I’m out of conceit with myself,’ he said; ’I’m so idle and useless; I wish that were all—­I wish myself better, but I’m such a weak coxcomb—­a father-confessor might keep me nearer to my duty—­some one to scold and exhort me.  Perhaps if some charitable lady would take me in hand, something might be made of me still.’

There was a vein of seriousness in this reverie which amused the young lady; for she had never heard anything worse of him—­very young ladies seldom do hear the worst—­than that he had played once or twice rather high.

‘Shall I ask Gertrude Chattesworth to speak to her Aunt Rebecca?’ said Lilias slyly.  ’Suppose you attend her school in Martin’s Row, with “better late than never” over her chimneypiece:  there are two pupils of your own sex, you know, and you might sit on the bench with poor Potts and good old Doolan.’

‘Thank you.  Miss Lilias,’ he answered, with a bow and a little laugh, as it seemed just the least bit in the world piqued; ’I know she would do it zealously; but neither so well nor so wisely as others might; I wish I dare ask you to lecture me.’

‘I!’ said that young lady.  ‘Oh, yes, I forgot,’ she went on merrily,’ five years ago, when I was a little girl, you once called me Dr. Walsingham’s curate, I was so grave—­do you remember?’

She did not know how much obliged Devereux was to her for remembering that poor little joke, and how much the handsome lieutenant would have given, at that instant, to kiss the hand of the grave little girl of five years ago.

‘I was a more impudent fellow then,’ he said, ’than I am now; won’t you forget my old impertinences, and allow me to make atonement, and be your—­your very humble servant now?’

She laughed.  ’Not my servant—­but you know I can’t help you being my parishioner.’

’And as such surely I may plead an humble right to your counsels and reproof.  Yes, you shall lecture me—­I’ll bear it from none but you, and the more you do it, the happier, at least, you make me,’ he said.