“Had I presumed to anticipate your visit, Miss Manners, I should have had something more suitable for a lady,” he said.  “What, you will not eat, either, Richard?”

I could not, so downcast had I become at the thought of parting.  I had sat up half the night before with him in restless argument and indecision, and even when he had left for Rotherhithe, early that morning, my mind had not been made.  My conscience had insisted that I should sail with John Paul; that I might never see my deaf grandfather on earth again.  I had gone to Arlington Street that morning resolved to say farewell to Dorothy.  I will not recount the history of that defeat, my dears.  Nay, to this day I know not how she accomplished the matter.  Not once had she asked me to remain, or referred to my going.  Nor had I spoken of it, weakling that I was.  She had come down in the pink lutestring, smiling but pale; and traces of tears in her eyes, I thought.  From that moment I knew that I was defeated.  It was she herself who had proposed going with me to see the Betsy sail.

“I will drink some Madeira to wish you Godspeed, captain,” I said.

“What is the matter with you, Richard?” Dolly cried; “you are as sour as my Lord Sandwich after a bad Newmarket.  Why, captain,” said she, “I really believe he wants to go, too.  The swain pines for his provincial beauty.”

Poor John Paul!  He had not yet learned that good society is seldom literal.

“Upon my soul, Miss Manners, there you do him wrong,” he retorted, with ludicrous heat; “you, above all, should know for whom he pines.”

“He has misled you by praising me.  This Richard, despite his frank exterior, is most secretive.”

“There you have hit him, Miss Manners,” he declared; “there you have hit him!  We were together night and day, on the sea and on the road, and, while I poured out my life to him, the rogue never once let fall a hint of the divine Miss Dorothy.  ’Twas not till I got to London that I knew of her existence, and then only by a chance.  You astonish me.  You speak of a young lady in Maryland?”

Dorothy swept aside my protest.

“Captain,” says she, gravely, “I leave you to judge.  What is your inference, when he fights a duel about a Miss with my Lord Comyn?”

“A duel!” cried the captain, astounded.

“Miss Manners persists in her view of the affair, despite my word to the contrary,” I put in rather coldly.

“But a duel!” cried the captain again; “and with Lord Comyn!  Miss Manners, I fondly thought I had discovered a constant man, but you make me fear he has had as many flames as I. And yet, Richard,” he added meaningly, “I should think shame on my conduct and I had had such a subject for constancy as you.”

Dorothy’s armour was pierced, and my ill-humour broken down, by this characteristic speech.  We both laughed, greatly to his discomfiture.

“You had best go home with him, Richard,” said Dolly.  “I can find my way back to Arlington Street alone.”