Sir Owen ap Owen, who had already taken some little time to recover his legs, found himself still at a loss to recall his recollection. At length, after contemplating the chaos he had created--By the Lord, friend De Lancaster, he exclaimed, I have made a terrible wreck of your crockery; but you should warn your housemaids not to dry rub your floors, for they are as slippery as glass, and let a man tread ever so carefully, a false step may throw him off his balance, and then who can answer for the mischief he may do? I heard a terrible screaming, but I hope, my good neighbour, nobody is hurt, and if your fair daughter, the divine Cecilia, (so I always call her) is inconsolable about her china, and if London can’t repair the loss, the East Indies shall, though I go all the way to fetch it home for her myself; for though I know well enough I have had a glass too much, and am but as you may call me a kind of bear in a ball-room, yet I know what a gentleman ought to do, when he has done mischief; and on the word of a true ancient Briton you may believe me, that if I had undesignedly set fire to your house, I am no such Hanoverian rat as to run away by the light of it: that is not my principle. Your principle, my good friend, replied De Lancaster, nobody doubts, and if your accident shall be productive of no other mischief than what has happened to Cecilia’s tea-cups, Cecilia thinks no more of them than I do. The screams you heard did not proceed from her-- No, no, cried Sir Owen, her sweet pipe never uttered such a shrill veiw-hollah; so if she is safe from hurt and harm, all is well. ’Twas an accident, as you say, and there’s an end of it. A servant now announced to the baronet, that his coach was at the door. De Lancaster entered into no farther explanations, and his awkward guest surrendered himself to the guidance of a coachman luckily not quite so tipsey as his master. CHAPTER II. _Conversation in a Library._ When the wheels of Sir Owen’s coach had ceased from rattling over the flinty pavement of the castle court, Robert De Lancaster glanced his eyes round the room, and in a corner of it discovered his son Philip, unnoticed of him before. Neither the cataract and confusion, that had ensued upon Sir Owen’s tumble, nor the screams of a lady, in whose safety he might be presumed to have some interest, had provoked this disciple of Harpocrates to violate his taciturnity, or to stir from his seat. At the same instant Colonel Wilson, a friend of the family, entered, and brought tidings from the runners in the service of Mr. Llewellyn, that things above stairs were going on as well as could be expected.