“Take this in remembrance of what you have suffered so unselfishly for my sake, Captain Paul,” I said, my voice breaking.  “And whatever befalls you, do not forget that Carvel Hall is your home as well as mine.”

He seemed as greatly affected as was I. Tears forced themselves to his eyes as he held the watch, which he opened absently to read the simple inscription I had put there.

“Oh, Dickie lad!” he cried, “I’ll be missing ye sair three hours hence, and thinking of ye for months to come in the night watches.  But something tells me I’ll see ye again.”

And he took me in his arms, embracing me with such fervour that there was no doubting the sincerity of his feelings.

“Miss Dorothy,” said he, when he was calmer, “I give ye Richard for a leal and a true heart.  Few men are born with the gift of keeping the affections warm despite absence, and years, and interest.  But have no fear of Richard Carvel.”

Dorothy stood a little apart, watching us, her eyes that faraway blue of the deepening skies at twilight.

“Indeed, I have no fear of him, captain,” she said gently.  Then, with a quick movement, impulsive and womanly, she unpinned a little gold brooch at her throat, and gave it to him, saying:  “In token of my gratitude for bringing him back to us.”

John Paul raised it to his lips.

“I shall treasure it, Miss Manners, as a memento of the greatest joy of my life.  And that has been,” gracefully taking her hand and mine, “the bringing you two together again.”

Dorothy grew scarlet as she curtseyed.  As for me, I could speak never a word.  He stepped over the side to hand her into the wherry, and embraced me once again.  And as we rowed away he waved his hat in a last good-by from the taffrail.  Then the Betsy floated down the Thames.

CHAPTER XXXI

“Upstairs into the world”

It will be difficult, my dears, without bulging this history out of all proportion, to give you a just notion of the society into which I fell after John Paul left London.  It was, above all, a gaming society.  From that prying and all-powerful God of Chance none, great or small, escaped.  Guineas were staked and won upon frugal King George and his beef and barley-water; Charles Fox and his debts; the intrigues of Choiseul and the Du Barry and the sensational marriage of the Due d’Orleans with Madame de Montesson (for your macaroni knew his Paris as well as his London); Lord March and his opera singer; and even the doings of Betty, the apple-woman of St. James’s Street, and the beautiful barmaid of Nando’s in whom my Lord Thurlow was said to be interested.  All these, and much more not to be repeated, were duly set down in the betting-books at White’s and Brooks’s.