When Captain De Crespigny called two days after this at St. John's Lodge, to take leave before setting out for Yorkshire, he looked so absent and so agitated, that Agnes became quite elated and flattered by what she attributed to his unconquerable regret at being obliged to take so long a leave of herself. She even forgave him for enquiring almost immediately what had become of Marion, and answered with careless vivacity, "She is gone to her favorite home at Portobello. Marion perfectly idolises her uncle. I should require to attend a series of lectures on naval tactics, and to take a course of nautical novels for a month, before I could get on with the Admiral as she does! My sister talks about the battles of Trafalgar and Camperdown, as if she had fought at them herself, but really somehow or other, I never can find a word for good, worthy sir Arthur!"

"And yet," observed Sir Patrick, "you never seem very much at a loss for conversation, Agnes, when I have the pleasure of seeing you! It is years, countless years, since I have entered his house, or since he has entered mine; but suppose we go down together some day, and cut out Marion at once, by doing the agreeable in our very best and most fascinating style!"

"If my uncle Doncaster were such a man, I should certainly make up to him greatly!" said Captain De Crespigny, in a tone more than commonly in earnest. "It would be well worth your while to try."

"Sir Arthur has nothing to leave! you are quite mistaken there!" replied Agnes, inadvertently. "When we were perfect children, and all on the very best terms, he used to say that it would be quite enough for an old sailor like him, if he could bequeath us his watch and enough to bury him! As Pat says, he might make his will on his thumb-nail. Oh! rest assured he has nothing to leave!"

"I did not suppose he had," continued Captain De Crespigny, gravely. "A small income in his liberal hand has done more good than the very largest in any other person's. It is an odd phenomenon in nature, that the lightest purse always is the most open to others, while the heavier a purse grows the more its mouth becomes contracted! A sort of spasmodic affection, I think!"

"I wonder if it will ever be engraved on people's tomb-stones how much they die worth?" said Agnes. "That would be all the good many people can ever get by their wealth, and what they are much more proud of, in this mercenary world, than of any personal good qualities."

"Young ladies are for ever working me purses, and I have nothing to put in them!" exclaimed Sir Patrick, throwing his own up in the air, and catching it again. "Sir Arthur and I are both fighting under the banner of poverty now; and that one word expresses in a small compass all earthly annoyance."

"Oh, no! There are many things worse!" exclaimed Agnes magnanimously. "What a vulgar, low, mercenary idea! so like you, Patrick!"

"Thank you, Agnes! If your good opinion were worth a farthing, I should grudge to have lost it!"

"But Dunbar! revenons a nos moutons," interrupted Captain De Crespigny, trying to look indifferent. "Surely there is no just cause or impediment why we may not ride down to Portobello this morning, and call on good, worthy Sir Arthur together. It is a perfect disgrace to us both that we never go near his house, much as I always have respected him, and always shall."

"This is a very sudden fit of cordiality! When did you feel the first symptoms coming on?" asked Sir Patrick drily, while Agnes began vehemently winding some skeins of silk. "Let me feel your pulse, De Crespigny. I am ready to bet your uncle against mine—and the odds are considerable—that half an hour since, you would no more have thought of paying a P.P.C. visit to old Sir Arthur, than to Lord Nelson's monument. My dear fellow, I know you—and you ought to know me better than to suppose me capable of paying a dull, penitential visit there!"

"Well, be it so! This is no time for me to recommend disinterested attentions, Dunbar, as I am on wing for Yorkshire, obliged during a whole long dreary month to play the amiable! Did you ever try that experiment, Miss Dunbar?"

"Of being amiable? no, never! I am not come to that yet! Whenever people mention a young lady as being amiable, you may depend upon it she has nothing better to recommend her. I leave mere hum-drum good qualities to such people as Clara Granville."

"Omit her in your conversation altogether, Agnes! I told you already, that she must never be named here," interrupted Sir Patrick, with angry vehemence. "Why will you continually intrude that family on our conversation?"

"I do not, Patrick. I beg leave to deny the honorable gentleman's last assertion! It is three days at least since I have so much as named Clara Gran——"

Before Agnes could finish her sentence, Sir Patrick, always afraid to trust his temper when irritated, as he knew the hurricane to be fearful if allowed to rage, had strode to the door, and burst out of the room, as if the very house were scarcely large enough to hold him. This denouement Agnes had confidently anticipated, being perfectly aware that her brother never withstood a second repetition of Clara's name, therefore she had artfully tried the experiment of producing an explosion, which might at any hazard expel him, and secure to herself a tete-a-tete leave-taking with Captain De Crespigny, from whom she now confidently anticipated a formal declaration.

When Sir Patrick's angry footsteps died away in the distance, it was not without some real agitation, therefore, and a great deal more assumed, that Agnes allowed her long, dark eye-lashes to droop over her cheek, and called up a rather ostentatious blush, while she sat for several minutes in silent embarrassment; but though Captain De Crespigny assumed his most fascinating expression, he seemed resolute not to begin the dialogue; and while affecting to be considerably embarrassed himself, an arch smile nevertheless glittered in his eye, and played about his mouth.

"Is it true," asked Agnes, at length, in a subdued voice, and without looking up, "that you are actually going for some months to-morrow? I must tie a knot on my pocket handkerchief, not to forget you during so long an absence."

"I would much rather tie a knot of a different kind," said Captain De Crespigny, in his usual rallying tone. "But necessity has no law. Going, going, gone! Positively the last time! Knocked down to Miss Dunbar. A great bargain. The best article on hand."

"You are an admirable auctioneer, and shall dispose of me next," said Agnes, laughingly selecting a rose-bud from her bouquet. "I must give you something to take away, very beautiful, and which I am sure you will like."

"That must be yourself, then," replied Captain De Crespigny, looking most cruelly charming. "I hear the young ladies are all to wear black crape on their left arm after my exit. I did expect a public dinner from them, but that is too common-place. My tailor received one lately on removing from one street to another, and the waiter at Carlisle on retiring from his profession. I wonder nobody ever voted me a testimonial. My speech on the occasion would be exquisite."

"Patrick thinks you very much addicted to make speeches," replied Agnes, with sly emphasis. "I suppose, as you are setting out so suddenly, that Lord Doncaster is seriously ill now. A number of old people have died off lately. He must be two hundred at least, for I have heard of him so long! I remember three years ago hearing that his memory had failed."

"Not at all—not in the very least. He thinks himself younger and handsomer every year. He is actually addicted still to flirtation in all its branches. He told me the last time we parted, that many ladies, if he chose, would prefer him to me. Perhaps they might. I dare say he was in the right. We never grow old in our family—never! and we have all excellent memories," continued Captain De Crespigny, fixing his dangerous eyes on Agnes. "Mine will be stored with many never-to-be forgotten recollections of the last few months, 'remembered,' as public orators say, 'till the latest moment of my existence.' Memory has put all these scenes in her pocket for me, to be enjoyed hereafter; and how delightful would a life-time be, made up of such hours as I have spent in this house! I feel myself striking root in it, like a cutting of geranium!"

"Indeed!" replied Agnes, smiling most benignly; "geraniums are very great favorites of mine—very great, indeed—so I wish you were metamorphosed into one."

"If all the events of life could be modelled on a plan of my own, what a pleasant little place the world would be!" said Captain De Crespigny, admiring the polish of his boots. "I might then continue here some time longer, as a volunteer in the corps of your victims, who are as numerous now as a disbanded army. Do pray let us call over the muster-roll of your admirers and count them. I could die in my chair with curiosity to know how many they are!"

"Not above three or four cases of life and death!" said Agnes, laughing. "But you jest at scars who never felt a wound."

"I most heartily sympathize with them all," replied Captain De Crespigny, with an extra-sentimental sigh. "I have gone through every sorrow of life myself—outraged affections, and all that sort of thing. You cannot conceive, Miss Dunbar, how like we victims are sometimes to the frog in the fable, inflated with empty hopes."

"I must shut my eyes to that."

"Your eyes should never be shut. They are much too beautiful! With respect to your admirers, they might say, like the weather-cock to the wind, 'Si vous ne changez pas, je suis constante!' The whole world has been pulling caps for you all winter, and you pretend to have limited yourself to three or four victims! Impossible! You are concealing the half of them! Forgetting Captains A——, B——, C——, and D——. I have as many young ladies as that dying for me. Now, do let us run over an authentic list of their names. Show me all your court-yards at once. I could bet the finest camellia at Loddige's, that you do not name them all."

"Who shall I say?" exclaimed Agnes, getting up an extempore blush, and her archest smiles. "I have a most inhospitable memory for bores, and shall forget two-thirds of them. Captain Digby, slightly wounded; Colonel Meade, pierced through the heart; Captain O'Brien, slowly recovering; Mr. Deveril, despaired of; Lord Wigton,——"

"Killed outright!" interrupted Captain De Crespigny. "You mention him in rather a more relenting tone than the rest, like Bonaparte, when he wept over one wounded man, alter condemning hundreds to death. But you are come to a period already. Is there no other worthy of remembrance?"

"Only one, whom I cannot name!" replied Agnes, turning away. "Last, but not least."

"Ah! some poor fellow with nothing, I suppose—waiting, perhaps, for the death of a rich relation; but those tiresome old bores always live for ever, and a day besides. Whoever he is, let me advise you not to think of him; a man should as soon ask the sun in the hemisphere to wait for him, as a young lady in the full blaze of her beauty and attractions. No, no, Miss Dunbar, take my advice. Be like time and tide. I have a real cousinly interest in your welfare, and should be delighted, on my return, to find this room fragrant with cake, and glittering with favors. I shall come down on purpose, if you ask me! I positively shall!"

If a look could kill, Captain De Crespigny must have withered away beneath the glance of Agnes' eyes, which streamed with indignant flashes of anger and surprise; but unconscious, apparently, of being otherwise than most agreeable, he continued, in his most captivating manner.

"I must be off now to Macleay's. Half a dozen friends are dying to obtain a likeness of me, and a deputation of ladies made me promise lately to sit for them. I wonder what can induce me to take so much trouble," added he, with a gay, triumphant laugh. "The painter is quite afraid he shall be robbed and murdered for it."

"Humility is not certainly your cardinal virtue," said Agnes, with a look of angry scorn, which few could have withstood. "You cultivate an extensive acquaintance."

"Very! I must really see whether people can be induced to cut me, for it is exceedingly troublesome. I know sixty-four families with three young ladies in each. It would puzzle the calculating machine to make out how many that amounts to. But, meantime, I must unwillingly say the most hateful of all words—farewell. I have been putting off time here, expecting Dunbar for the last half hour, though little able to afford so many minutes. My idiot of a watch must surely be too slow, or your brother would have been back about the sale of mad Tom. I have twenty minds to buy him, if Dunbar did not ask so very long a price."

"You are intending, I believe," asked Agnes, "to enter him for the—the Chiltern Hundreds?"

"Not exactly! but the Doncaster St. Leger. He would be the first horse in that line, though asses are perfectly accustomed to them. Good morning! au revoir! I mean to Londonize for a few weeks, then go to Paris, and afterwards disperse myself over every corner of the uncivilized globe. Can I do anything for you anywhere? Geneva velvets? Parisian bonnets? Swiss muslins? I am at your service in every quarter of the world. May I beg my very best regards to your sister."

So saying, Captain De Crespigny bowed himself out of the room, with very much the air of a popular actor who expects three rounds of applause, and Agnes having, with a face as unmoved as if it had been enamelled, coldly given him her hand, with an ill-supported smile on her quivering lip, wished him a pleasant journey, and turned almost haughtily away; a bolt of ice seemed to have fallen upon her heart, and in that small moment was comprised the agony of ages; but the greatest wonder in nature is the entire self-command given to many, and especially to women, by means of which they can hear what involves the happiness of a life-time, and yet betray no visible emotion.

The strongest feelings on earth never are discovered. Feeble minds can conceal nothing, but those who have strength of mind to suffer most deeply, are those who have strength of mind also to hide what they do endure. On slight occasions, Agnes was a most accomplished fainter; but now, having stood, with a specious smile on her countenance, till the door had finally closed, she rushed to the privacy of her own room, and closed the door, then seating herself, in all the luxury of solitude, she meditated with silent astonishment on all that had passed.

No coroner's inquest can be summoned on a deceased flirtation, and whether it die a natural death or a violent one never can be known, as it may be caused merely by some trifling oversight, perhaps by the cruel aspersion of an enemy, or simply by whim and caprice, as in this case seemed the most probable, and to Agnes the most mortifying. Wounded in all her most sensitive feelings, a crowd of angry and depressing thoughts crowded into her brain, while she could not but feel that the arrows which had struck her were most cruelly barbed and most skilfully aimed. It was harrowing to her vain, proud spirit, to imagine that Captain De Crespigny could really be indifferent. It seemed, indeed, almost impossible! Could his carelessness be all assumed! Had he, indeed, an honorable scruple of engaging her upon the uncertainty of his uncle's demise. It might be so. Agnes felt that entire despondency would come soon enough, if come it must; and anxious to believe in Captain De Crespigny's attachment, she seemed now resolved to keep up the farce with herself a little longer. She felt certain that he had cast back a look of regret on leaving the room, which spoke volumes, and these volumes she filled up according to her own imagination. The parting had, perhaps, been as painful to Captain De Crespigny as to herself, but what could he do if Lord Doncaster always continued to be the "undying one," standing in the way of their mutual happiness. Agnes now lived over every scene which had passed between herself and her supposed lover. She could not imagine those feelings expressed to any other which seemed created by herself alone. She recapitulated all his civilities to herself, remembered how his last sigh had been sighed, how his last look had been looked; and, after a glance at the mirror, which proved as usual an effectual safety-valve to any feelings of mortification, she became at last restored to the agreeable conviction, that the most considerate, self-denying, and constant of lovers was Captain De Crespigny.

"And," exclaimed Agnes, with another triumphant glance at the mirror, "as he said only yesterday, 'on peut fuir sans oublier.' Let him admire any other if he can!"