No wonder the whole town was very soon agog about the couple, until at the end of a year people began to talk of them separately, she going her way, and he his.  She could not always be on the top of a coach, which was his throne of happiness.

Plenty of stories are current still of his fame as a four-in-hand coachman.  They say he once drove an Emperor and a King, a Prince Chancellor and a pair of Field Marshals, and some ladies of the day, from the metropolis to Richmond Hill in fifty or sixty odd minutes, having the ground cleared all the way by bell and summons, and only a donkey-cart and man, and a deaf old woman, to pay for; and went, as you can imagine, at such a tearing gallop, that those Grand Highnesses had to hold on for their lives and lost their hats along the road; and a publican at Kew exhibits one above his bar to the present hour.  And Countess Fanny was up among them, they say.  She was equal to it.  And some say, that was the occasion of her meeting the Old Buccaneer.

She met him at Richmond in Surrey we know for certain.  It was on Richmond Hill, where the old King met his Lass.  They say Countess Fanny was parading the hill to behold the splendid view, always admired so much by foreigners, with their Achs and Hechs! and surrounded by her crowned courtiers in frogged uniforms and moustachioed like sea-horses, a little before dinner time, when Kirby passed her, and the Emperor made a remark on him, for Kirby was a magnificent figure of a man, and used to be compared to a three-decker entering harbour after a victory.  He stood six feet four, and was broad-shouldered and deep-chested to match, and walked like a king who has humbled his enemy.  You have seen big dogs.  And so Countess Fanny looked round.  Kirby was doing the same.  But he had turned right about, and appeared transfixed and like a royal beast angry, with his wound.  If ever there was love at first sight, and a dreadful love, like a runaway mail-coach in a storm of wind and lightning at black midnight by the banks of a flooded river, which was formerly our comparison for terrible situations, it was when those two met.

And, what! you exclaim, Buccaneer Kirby full sixty-five, and Countess Fanny no more than three and twenty, a young beauty of the world of fashion, courted by the highest, and she in love with him!  Go and gaze at one of our big ships coming out of an engagement home with all her flags flying and her crew manning the yards.  That will give you an idea of a young woman’s feelings for an old warrior never beaten down an inch by anything he had to endure; matching him, I dare say, in her woman’s heart, with the Mighty Highnesses who had only smelt the outside edge of battle.  She did rarely admire a valiant man.  Old as Methuselah, he would have made her kneel to him.  She was all heart for a real hero.