“Well, Harry, I consent; it shall remain so.  Now for your part, for I have not come to that.”

“Mine,” said I, in amazement; “why how can I possibly have any character assigned to me in the drama?”

“I’ll tell you, Harry, you shall come with me in the gig in the capacity of my valet.”

“Your what?” said I, horror-struck at his impudence.

“Come, no nonsense, Harry, you’ll have a glorious time of it—­shall choose as becoming a livery as you like—­and you’ll have the whole female world below stairs dying for you; and all I ask for such an opportunity vouchsafed to you is to puff me, your master, in every possible shape and form, and represent me as the finest and most liberal fellow in the world, rolling in wealth, and only striving to get rid of it.”

The unparalleled effrontery of Master Jack, in assigning to me such an office, absolutely left me unable to reply to him; while he continued to expatiate upon the great field for exertion thus open to us both.  At last it occurred to me to benefit by an anecdote of a something similar arrangement, of capturing, not a young lady, but a fortified town, by retorting Jack’s proposition.

“Come,” said I, “I agree, with one only difference—­I’ll be the master and you the man on this occasion.”

To my utter confusion, and without a second’s consideration, Waller grasped my hand, and cried, “done.”  Of course I laughed heartily at the utter absurdity of the whole scheme, and rallied my friend on his prospects of Botany Bay for such an exploit; never contemplating in the most remote degree the commission of such extravagance.

Upon this Jack, to use the expressive French phrase, “pris la parole,” touching with a master-like delicacy on my late defeat among the Callonbys, (which up to this instant I believed him in ignorance of;) he expatiated upon the prospect of my repairing that misfortune, and obtaining a fortune considerably larger; he cautiously abstained from mentioning the personal charms of the young lady, supposing, from my lachrymose look, that my heart had not yet recovered the shock of Lady Jane’s perfidy, and rather preferred to dwell upon the escape such a marriage could open to me from the mockery of the mess-table, the jesting of my brother officers, and the life-long raillery of the service, wherever the story reached.

The fatal facility of my disposition, so often and so frankly chronicled in these Confessions—­the openness to be led whither any one might take the trouble to conduct me—­the easy indifference to assume any character which might be pressed upon me, by chance, accident, or design, assisted by my share of three flasks of champagne, induced me first to listen —­then to attend to—­soon after to suggest—­and finally, absolutely to concur in and agree to a proposal, which, at any other moment, I must have regarded as downright insanity.  As the clock struck two, I had just affixed my name to an agreement, for Jack Waller had so much of method in his madness, that, fearful of my retracting in the morning, he had committed the whole to writing, which, as a specimen of Jack’s legal talents I copy from the original document now in my posession.