If the Rose of Torridge herself had walked into the room, she could hardly have caused more blank astonishment than Frank’s bold speech.  Every guest turned red, and pale, and red again, and looked at the other as much as to say, “What right has any one but I to drink her?  Lift your glass, and I will dash it out of your hand;” but Frank, with sweet effrontery, drank “The health of the Rose of Torridge, and a double health to that worthy gentleman, whosoever he may be, whom she is fated to honor with her love!”

“Well done, cunning Frank Leigh!” cried blunt Will Cary; “none of us dare quarrel with you now, however much we may sulk at each other.  For there’s none of us, I’ll warrant, but thinks that she likes him the best of all; and so we are bound to believe that you have drunk our healths all round.”

“And so I have:  and what better thing can you do, gentlemen, than to drink each other’s healths all round likewise:  and so show yourselves true gentlemen, true Christians, ay, and true lovers?  For what is love (let me speak freely to you, gentlemen and guests), what is love, but the very inspiration of that Deity whose name is Love?  Be sure that not without reason did the ancients feign Eros to be the eldest of the gods, by whom the jarring elements of chaos were attuned into harmony and order.  How, then, shall lovers make him the father of strife?  Shall Psyche wed with Cupid, to bring forth a cockatrice’s egg? or the soul be filled with love, the likeness of the immortals, to burn with envy and jealousy, division and distrust?  True, the rose has its thorn:  but it leaves poison and stings to the nettle.  Cupid has his arrow:  but he hurls no scorpions.  Venus is awful when despised, as the daughters of Proetus found:  but her handmaids are the Graces, not the Furies.  Surely he who loves aright will not only find love lovely, but become himself lovely also.  I speak not to reprehend you, gentlemen; for to you (as your piercing wits have already perceived, to judge by your honorable blushes) my discourse tends; but to point you, if you will but permit me, to that rock which I myself have, I know not by what Divine good hap, attained; if, indeed, I have attained it, and am not about to be washed off again by the next tide.”

Frank’s rapid and fantastic oratory, utterly unexpected as it was, had as yet left their wits no time to set their tempers on fire; but when, weak from his wounds, he paused for breath, there was a haughty murmur from more than one young gentleman, who took his speech as an impertinent interference with each man’s right to make a fool of himself; and Mr. Coffin, who had sat quietly bolt upright, and looking at the opposite wall, now rose as quietly, and with a face which tried to look utterly unconcerned, was walking out of the room:  another minute, and Lady Bath’s prophecy about the feast of the Lapithae might have come true.

But Frank’s heart and head never failed him.