“I thought t’other morning we spent together was very happy,” Lady Bell spoke out of the fulness of her heart to her squire when they were in the square, and he was looking out for a chair that she might get home in time to keep an appointment with her mantua-maker; “but I shall be always recalling this day and its lessons when I am busiest and happiest at Summerhill.” “Don’t you think I shall recall it, Lady Bell,” asked Harry Fane, “when for a studio in which to busy myself, I shall be reduced to ‘between decks,’ and for my fine arts shall be setting men to rig spars and haul in sails, varied by pointing a gun instead of a telescope, and submitting to be carried down into the cockpit?” “Oh, no; you won’t be carried there!” cried Lady Bell, with impetuous haste. “At least I did not mean to crave pity from you,” protested Harry with unconscious tenderness shaking his firm voice. “A grumpy, hulking fellow who has been so much at sea that he has lost the manœuvre of giving a wide berth to what displeases his crotchets on shore, is of no good save to shout orders in a storm, or to keep a look-out against the national enemy.” Lady Bell did not contradict him, but she looked in his face, somewhat set and lined for a man of his age, but an honest and manly face, which had looked its kindest on her, the hardness in which she could melt, as she had said, like the melting of a block of ice before a meridian sun. She gave him a parting look as the chair-men lifted her chair, which raised a mighty commotion, for which Lady Bell was decidedly answerable, in the blue-coated breast of the young man—thought so long-headed and calm-hearted, so rational, discreet, and obdurate, that he could be let cast stones at all the follies and extravagancies of his time. Lady Bell’s look said, “You are good for all that is cleverest, truest, bravest—not to the world, perhaps, for you know, none better, that the world is a giddy, vicious, Vanity Fair—but to me. You need not tell others that I say so, but I say it; and you need not forget that I said it, in the long days during which I am mixing with people whom you justly despise, or have taken refuge at Summerhill; and when you are sailing on the high seas, doing your duty like a man, guarding our shores, and fighting our foes.” CHAPTER XV. THE MASQUED BALL IN PROSPECT. Captain Fane, though he _was_ rational, and had a regard for consequences, was fallible, and did not cease to frequent his cousin’s house in Cleveland Court, because of that very inconsiderate look of Lady Bell’s.