Well! that is charming. I protest you make me the politest speeches; but alas! they go for nothing. No woman of discretion should encourage the attachment of a man that’s married. I may not always be a married man. That’s true; but then perhaps you’d change your tone. Never. Were I quite sure of that, I would not listen to Sir Arthur Floyd; nor indeed to any body in Sir Owen’s life time--but recollect we have each a son. What must we do with them? They’ll never set their horses up together. What is the reason that they don’t agree? I doubt your youngster is a little proud. Isn’t it so? I know nothing of him. My David does not like him, I assure you. He says he is certain you are not his father. I know nothing of that also. He never speaks of him by the name of John De Lancaster; he calls him Jack Jones after the name of your wife’s favourite lover Captain Jones, for whom she is so inconsolable. Why now that’s wonderful--I can’t think how that secret could get out. Secret, my friend! You are much mistaken if you think it is any secret. They say he is as like that Jones as ever son was like a father--but I am talking treason, and you must not betray me--People you know will be censorious, and it is rather remarkable, that since Jones’s death she has never added to your family stock. There’s nothing remarkable in that, if the talking people knew what they talked about. Why certainly, were the case as they give out, one son of that sort is quite enough, and were I in your place I should be apt to think him one more than was welcome. I am at no trouble about him. His grandfather and his aunt are at all the pains of spoiling him. Not by overmuch education I should think. Begging the young gentleman’s pardon, I take him to be a most egregious dunce. Oh! if you take him to be that, I shall take him to be my own son. But with your leave we’ll say no more about him. Agreed! Besides I know your time is nearly out. This however I must tell you in secret--Sir Owen’s life is despaired of, and his whole estate is settled and entailed upon my son: David will soon be of age, and probably I shall then have some other residence to seek. Your father I understand is in his seventy-fifth year, and your son in his fifteenth. A short time according to the course of nature may set us both free. In the mean time let me see you as frequently as you can contrive, and if I have been fortunate enough to make an impression on your heart, be assured you have interested mine no less; and so long as you continue to persuade me that I am agreeable in your eyes, neither Sir Arthur Floyd, nor any man, shall be other than indifferent to me. Having said this, she reached out her hand, the gallant Philip pressed it to his lips, made his reverence, and departed. CHAPTER V. _Mr. De Lancaster descants upon the Duties of a Preceptor in the learned Languages._