The effect of this story was precisely in the line of what Mr. Semple had supposed. The weakness of Richard Spencer's nature was a slavish adoration of the nobility. To have had Lord Medway for a rival was an honor to be fully appreciated; and to the end of his life it supplied him, in all his hours of after-dinner confidences, with a sentimental story he delighted to tell. "Yes, gentlemen," he would say, even when an old man, "Yes, gentlemen, I was once in love, madly in love, with as beautiful a creature as ever trod this earth. And she led me a pretty dance right to the altar steps, and then deserted me. But I cannot blame her. No, by St. George, I cannot! I had a rival, gentlemen, the young, handsome, rich and powerful Lord Medway, a nobleman that sits in the house of Lords and may be of the Privy Council. What hope for poor Dick Spencer against such a rival? None at all, gentlemen, and so you see, for Lord Medway's sake I am a bachelor, and always shall be one. No girl for me, after the divine Maria was lost. I saw her going to the last drawing-room and she smiled at me. I live for such little favors, and I have reason to know my great rival does not grudge them to me." And in this way Richard Spencer consoled himself, and was perhaps more reasonably happy than if he had married a reluctant woman and been grieved all the years of his life by her contradictions. The unexpected return of Maria to her grandparents quite overthrew Lord Medway's plans for a few hours. He had hoped to marry her in London, and take her at once to his town house, which was even then being prepared and adorned for her. And affairs in New York were in such a state of chaos that he was even anxious for her personal safety. He had left everything and every one in a state of miserable transition and uncertainty, and he was sure things were growing worse and would continue to do so until the departure of the hostile army and the return of the patriotic citizens. For it was they, and they only, who had any interest in the preservation of their beautiful city from plunder and destruction. And as he thought on these things, he reflected that it would be an impossibility to secure for Maria and himself any comfortable passage home, in the ordinary shipping, or even in the ships of war. He was sure every available inch of room would be filled with royalist refugees, and he knew well the likely results of men and women and children crowded together, without sufficient food and water, and exposed to the winter's cold and storm without any preparation for it. "It will not do, it will not do!" he ejaculated, "whatever it costs, I must charter a vessel for our own use."