It made him very happy, and he never once fell into the affectation of talk and manner appropriate to a fashionable tea-table. He seemed to enjoy both the rebel sentiments of Agnes, and the royalist temper of Maria; and he treated both girls with such hearty deference and respect as he did not always show to much more famous dames. And it was while sitting at this tea-table he gave his heart without reserve to Maria Semple. If he had any doubts or withdrawals, he abandoned them in that happy hour, and said frankly to himself: "I will make her my wife. That is my desire and my resolve; and I will not turn aside from it for anything, nor for any man living; Maria Semple is the woman I love, no one else shall have her." In following out this resolve he understood the value of Agnes; and he did all he could to gain her good-will. She was well disposed to give it; her father's approval bespoke hers. A feeling of good comradeship and confidence grew rapidly as they ate, and drank their tea, and talked freely and without many reservations, for the sake of their political feelings. So much so, that when Lord Medway rose to go, there came to Agnes a sudden fear and chill. She looked at him apprehensively, and while he held her hand, she said: "Lord Medway, Maria and I have been very sincere with you, but I am sure our sincerity cannot wrong us, in your keeping." This was not very explicit, but he understood her meaning. He laid his hand upon the table at which they had eaten, and said: "It is an altar to faith and friendship. When I am capable of repeating anything said at the table where I sit as guest, I shall be lost to truth and honor, and be too vile to remember." He spoke with force, and with a certain eloquence, very different from his usual familiar manner, and both Agnes and Maria showed him in their shining eyes and confiding air how surely they believed in him. After this event there was continual excitement in the city, and General Clinton returned to it at once. He called in the little army he had cutting grass for winter fodder, and with twenty thousand troops shut himself up in New York. "For once the man has been employing himself well and wiselike," said Madame Semple. "He has cut all the grass, and cured all the grass round about Rye, and White Plains, and New Rochelle, and East Chester, and a few other places; and he has left it all ahint him. What a wiselike wonderfu' man is General Sir Henry Clinton!" "And the rebels have carried off the last wisp o' hay he made," said the Elder angrily. "They were on the vera heels o' our soldiers. It's beyond believing! It's just the maist mortifying thing that ever happened us." Madame looked pityingly at her husband, raised her shoulders to emphasize the look, and then in a thin voice, quavering a little with her weakness and emotion, began to sing to herself from that old translation of the Psalms so dear to every Scottish heart: