“Lord Comyn has told you the truth,” I said; “so much I know.”

Alas for the exits and entrances of life!  Here comes the footman.

“Mr. Fox,” said he, rolling the name, for it was a great one.

Confound Mr. Fox!  He might have waited five short minutes.

It was, in truth, none other than that precocious marvel of England who but a year before had taken the breath from the House of Commons, and had sent his fame flying over the Channel and across the wide Atlantic; the talk of London, who set the fashions, cringed not before white hairs, or royalty, or customs, or institutions, and was now, at one and twenty, Junior Lord of the Admiralty—­Charles James Fox.  His face was dark, forbidding, even harsh—­until he smiled.  His eyebrows were heavy and shaggy, and his features of a rounded, almost Jewish mould.  He put me in mind of the Stuarts, and I was soon to learn that he was descended from them.

As he entered the room I recall remarking that he was possessed of the supremest confidence of any man I had ever met.  Mrs. Manners he greeted in one way, Mr. Marmaduke in another, and Mr. Walpole in still another.  To Comyn it was “Hello, Jack,” as he walked by him.  Each, as it were, had been tagged with a particular value.

Chagrined as I was at the interruption, I was struck with admiration.  For the smallest actions of these rare men of master passions so compel us.  He came to Dorothy, whom he seemed not to have perceived at first, and there passed between them such a look of complete understanding that I suddenly remembered Comyn’s speech of the night before, “Now it is Charles Fox.”  Here, indeed, was the man who might have won her.  And yet I did not hate him.  Nay, I loved him from the first time he addressed me.  It was Dorothy who introduced us.

“I think I have heard of you, Mr. Carvel,” he said, making a barely perceptible wink at Comyn.

“And I think I have heard of you, Mr. Fox,” I replied.

“The deuce you have, Mr. Carvel!” said he, and laughed.  And Comyn laughed, and Dorothy laughed, and I laughed.  We were friends from that moment.

“Richard has appeared amongst us like a comet,” put in the ubiquitous Mr. Manners, “and, I fear, intends to disappear in like manner.”

“And where is the tail of this comet?” demanded Fox, instantly; “for I understood there was a tail.”

John Paul was brought up, and the Junior Lord of the Admiralty looked him over from head to toe.  And what, my dears, do you think he said to him?

“Have you ever acted, Captain Paul?”

The captain started back in surprise.

“Acted!” he exclaimed; “really, sir, I do not know.  I have never been upon the boards.”

Mr. Fox vowed that he could act:  that he was sure of it, from the captain’s appearance.

“And I, too, am sure of it, Mr. Fox,” cried Dorothy; clapping her hands.  “Persuade him to stay awhile in London, that you may have him at your next theatricals at Holland House.  Why, he knows Shakespeare and Pope and—­and Chaucer by heart, and Ovid and Horace,—­is it not so, Mr. Walpole?”