“His honour, Mr. Manners!”

Comyn and I exchanged glances, and his Lordship gave a low whistle.  Nor was the circumstance without its effect upon Mr. Dix.  With my knowledge of the character of Dorothy’s father I might have foreseen this visit, which came, nevertheless, as a complete surprise.  For a moment I hesitated, and then made a motion to show him up.  Comyn voiced my decision.

“Why let the little cur stand in the way?” he said; “he counts for nothing.”

Mr. Marmaduke was not long in ascending, and tripped into the room as Mr. Dix backed out of it, as gayly as tho’ he had never sent me about my business in the street.  His clothes, of a cherry cut velvet, were as ever a little beyond the fashion, and he carried something I had never before seen, then used by the extreme dandies in London,—­an umbrella.

“What!  Richard Carvel!  Is it possible?” he screamed in his piping voice.  “We mourned you for dead, and here you turn up in London alive and well, and bigger and stronger than ever.  Oons! one need not go to Scripture for miracles.  I shall write my congratulations to Mr. Carvel this day, sir.”  And he pushed his fingers into my waistcoat, so that Comyn and I were near to laughing in his face.  For it was impossible to be angry with a little coxcomb of such pitiful intelligence.

“Ah, good morning, my Lord.  I see your Lordship has risen early in the same good cause, I myself am up two hours before my time.  You will pardon the fuss I am making over the lad, Comyn, but his grandfather is my very dear friend, and Richard was brought up with my daughter Dorothy.  They were like brother and sister.  What, Richard, you will not take my hand!  Surely you are not so unreasonable as to hold against me that unfortunate circumstance in Arlington Street!  Yes, Dorothy has shocked me.  She has told me of it.”

Comyn winked at me as I replied:—­

“We shan’t mention it, Mr. Manners.  I have had my three weeks in prison, and perhaps know the world all the better for them.”

He held up his umbrella in mock dismay, and stumbled abruptly into a chair.  There he sat looking at me, a whimsical uneasiness on his face.  “We shall indeed mention it, sir.  Three weeks in prison, to think of it!  And you would not so much as send me a line.  Ah, Richard, pride is a good thing, but I sometimes think we from Maryland have too much of it.  We shall indeed speak of the matter.  Out of justice to me you must understand how it occurred.  You must know that I am deucedly absentminded, and positively lost without my glass.  And I had somebody with me, so Dorothy said.  Chartersea, I believe.  And his Grace made me think you were a cursed beggar.  I make a point never to have to do with ’em.”

“You are right, Mr. Manners,” Comyn cut in dryly; “for I have known them to be so persistently troublesome, when once encouraged, as to interfere seriously with our arrangements.”