“Ah, to be sure!” he nodded, “our ways have lain widely separate hitherto—­you, a scholar, treading the difficult path of learning; I—­oh, egad! a terrible fellow! a mauvais sujet! a sad, sad dog!  But after all, cousin, when one comes to look at you to-day, you might stand for a terrible example of Virtue run riot—­a distressing spectacle of dutiful respect and good precedent cut off with a shilling.  Really, it is horrifying to observe to what depths Virtue may plunge an otherwise well-balanced individual.  Little dreamed those dear, kind, well-meaning relatives and friends—­damn ’em! that while the wilful Maurice lived on, continually getting into hot water and out again, up to his eyes in debt, and pretty well esteemed, the virtuous pattern Peter would descend to a hammer and saw—­I should say, chisel—­in a very grimy place where he is, it seems, the presiding genius.  Indeed, this first meeting of ours, under these circumstances, is somewhat dramatic, as it should be.”

“And yet, we have met before,” said I, “and the circumstances were then even more dramatic, perhaps,—­we met in a tempest, sir.”

“Ha!” he exclaimed, dwelling on the word, and speaking very slowly, “a tempest, cousin?”

“There was much wind and rain, and it was very dark.”

“Dark, cousin?”

“But I saw your face very plainly as you lay on your back, sir, by the aid of a Postilion’s lanthorn, and was greatly struck by our mutual resemblance.”  Sir Maurice raised his glass and looked at me, and, as he looked, smiled, but he could not hide the sudden, passionate quiver of his thin nostrils, or the gleam of the eyes beneath their languid lids.  He rose slowly and paced to the door; when he came back again, he was laughing softly, but still he could not hide the quiver of his nostrils, or the gleam of the eyes beneath their languid lids.

“So—­it was—­you?” he murmured, with a pause between the words.  “Oh, was ever anything so damnably contrary!  To think that I should hunt her into your very arms!  To think that of all men in the world it should be you to play the squire of dames!” And he laughed again, but, as he did so, the stout riding-whip snapped in his hands like a straw.  He glanced down at the broken pieces, and from them to me.  “You see, I am rather strong in the hands, cousin,” said he, shaking his head, “but I was not—­quite strong enough, last time we met, though, to be sure, as you say, it was very dark.  Had I known it was worthy Cousin Peter’s throat I grasped, I think I might have squeezed it just—­a little—­tighter.”

“Sir,” said I, shaking my head, “I really don’t think you could have done it.”

“Yes,” he sighed, tossing his broken whip into a corner.  “Yes, I think so—­you see, I mistook you for merely an interfering country bumpkin—­”

“Yes,” I nodded, “while I, on the other hand, took you for a fine gentleman nobly intent on the ruin of an unfortunate, friendless girl, whose poverty would seem to make her an easy victim—­”