’Insulting prescription!  I am surprised at such a word being applied to any prescription of mine—­though, to be sure, patients are sometimes offended at being told the nature of their illnesses; and, I dare say, they may take offence at the medicines which their cases require.’

‘I did not ask you to prescribe for me.’

’Oh, ho!  Then you were the Master Coxe who sent the note through Bethia!  Let me tell you it has cost her her place, and was a very silly letter into the bargain.’

’It was not the conduct of a gentleman, sir, to intercept it, and to open it, and to read words never addressed to you, sir.’

‘No!’ said Mr. Gibson, with a slight twinkle in his eye and a curl on his lips, not unnoticed by the indignant Mr. Coxe.  ’I believe I was once considered tolerably good-looking, and I dare say I was as great a coxcomb as any one at twenty; but I don’t think that even then I should quite have believed that all those pretty compliments were addressed to myself.’

‘It was not the conductor a gentleman, sir,’ repeated Mr. Coxe, stammering over his words—­he was going on to say something more, when Mr. Gibson broke in.

‘And let me tell you, young man,’ replied Mr. Gibson, with a sudden sternness in his voice, ’that what you have done is only excusable in consideration of your youth and extreme ignorance of what are considered the laws of domestic honour.  I receive you into my house as a member of my family—­you induce one of my servants—­corrupting her with a bribe, I have no doubt—­’

‘Indeed, sir!  I never gave her a penny.’

’Then you ought to have done.  You should always pay those who do your dirty work.’

‘Just now, sir, you called it corrupting with a bribe,’ muttered Mr Coxe.

Mr. Gibson took no notice of this speech, but went on,—­’Inducing one of my servants to risk her place, without offering her the slightest equivalent, by begging her to convey a letter clandestinely to my daughter—­a mere child.’

’Miss Gibson, sir, is nearly seventeen!  I heard you say so only the other day,’ said Mr. Coxe, aged twenty.  Again Mr. Gibson ignored the remark.

’A letter which you were unwilling to have seen by her father, who had tacitly trusted to your honour, by receiving you as an inmate of his house.  Your father’s son—­I know Major Coxe well—­ought to have come to me, and have said out openly, “Mr. Gibson, I love—­or I fancy that I love—­your daughter; I do not think it right to conceal this from you, although unable to earn a penny; and with no prospect of an unassisted livelihood, even for myself, for several years, I shall not say a word about my feelings—­or fancied feelings—­to the very young lady herself.”  That is what your father’s son ought to have said; if, indeed, a couple of grains of reticent silence would not have been better still.’

‘And if I had said it, sir—­perhaps I ought to have said it,’ said poor Mr. Coxe, in a hurry of anxiety, ’what would have been your answer?  Would you have sanctioned my passion, sir?’