“‘Perhaps a repulse from his Majesty,’ says Dolly, promptly.

“‘Nay,’ says Mr. Walpole, making a face, for he hates a laugh at his cost; nothing less than a young American giant, with the attire of Dr. Benjamin Franklin and the manner of the Fauxbourg Saint Germain.  But he had a whiff of deer leather about him, and shoulders and back and legs to make his fortune at Hockley in the Hole, had he lived two generations since.  And he had with him a strange, Scotch sea-captain, who had rescued him from pirates, bless you, no less.  That is, he said he was a sea-captain; but he talked French like a Parisian, and quoted Shakespeare like Mr. Burke or Dr. Johnson.  He may have been M. Caron de Beaumarchais, for I never saw him, or a soothsayer, or Cagliostro the magician, for he guessed my name.’

“‘Guessed your name!’ we cried, for the story was out of the ordinary.

“‘Just that,’ answered he, and repeated some damned verse I never heard, with Horatio in it, and made them all laugh.”

John Paul and I looked at each other in astonishment, and we, too, laughed heartily.  It was indeed an odd coincidence.

His Lordship continued:  “‘Well, be that as it may,’ said Horry, ’he was an able man of sagacity, this sea-captain, and, like many another, had a penchant for being a gentleman.  But he was more of an oddity than Hertford’s beast of Gevaudan, and was dressed like Salvinio, the monkey my Lord Holland brought back from his last Italian tour.’”

I have laughed over this description since, my dears, and so has John Paul.  But at that time I saw nothing funny in it, and winced with him when Comyn repeated it with such brutal unconsciousness.  However, young Englishmen of birth and wealth of that day were not apt to consider the feelings of those they deemed below them.

“Come to your story.  Comyn,” I cut in testily.

But his Lordship missed entirely the cause of my displeasure.

“Listen to him!” he exclaimed good-naturedly.  “He will hear of nothing but Miss Dolly.  Well, Richard, my lad, you should have seen her as Horry went on to tell that you had been taken from Maryland, with her head forward and her lips parted, and a light in those eyes of hers to make a man fall down and worship.  For Mr. Lloyd, or some one in your Colony, had written of your disappearance, and I vow bliss Dorothy has not been the same since.  Nor have I been the only one to remark it,” said he, waving off my natural protest at such extravagance.  “We have talked of you more than once, she and I, and mourned you for dead.  But I am off my course again, as we sailors say, captain.  Horry was describing how Richard lifted little Goble by one hand and spun all the dignity out of him, when Miss Manners broke in, being able to contain herself no longer.

“‘An American, Mr. Walpole, and from Maryland?’ she demanded.  And the way she said it made them all look at her.