“I could never think anything but good of you, Fossbrooke. Get in, and come out to 'the Lodge' to dinner.” “No, no; impossible. I am heartily ashamed of myself. I grow worse and worse every day; people will lose patience at last, and cut me; good-bye.” “Wait one moment. I want to ask you something about young Lendrick. Would he take an appointment in a colonial regiment? Would he--” But Fossbrooke had elbowed his way through the dense crowd by this time, and was far out of hearing,--shocked with himself, and overwhelmed with the thought that in his absurd forgetfulness he might have involved another in ridicule. “Think of me standing talking to his Excellency with this on my arm, Tom!” said he, flushing with shame and annoyance: “how these absent fits keep advancing on me! When a man begins to forget himself in this fashion, the time is not very distant when his friends will be glad to forget him. I said so this moment to Lord Wilmington, and I am afraid that he agreed with me. Where are the screws, Tom,--have I been forgetting them also?” “No, sir, I have them here; the holdfasts were not finished, but they will be sent over to us this evening, along with the cramps you ordered.” “So, then, my head was clear so far,” cried he, with a smile. “In my prosperous days, Tom, these freaks of mine were taken as good jokes, and my friends laughed at them over my Burgundy; but when a man has no longer Burgundy to wash down his blunders with, it is strange how different becomes the criticism, and how much more candid the critic.” “So that, in point of enlightenment, sir, it is better to be poor.” “It is what I was just going to observe to you,” said he, calmly. “Can you give me a cigar?” CHAPTER XXVII. THE TWO LUCYS Within a week after this incident, while Fossbrooke and young Lendrick were ploughing the salt sea towards their destination, Lucy sat in her room one morning engaged in drawing. She was making a chalk copy from a small photograph her brother had sent her, a likeness of Sir Brook, taken surreptitiously as he sat smoking at a window, little heeding or knowing of the advantage thus taken of him. The head was considerably advanced, the brow and the eyes were nearly finished, and she was trying for the third time to get an expression into the mouth which the photograph had failed to convey, but which she so often observed in the original. Eagerly intent on her work, she never heard the door open behind her, and was slightly startled as a very gentle hand was laid on her shoulder. “Is this a very presumptuous step of mine, dear Lucy?” said Mrs. Sewell, with one of her most bewitching smiles: “have I your leave for coming in upon you in this fashion?” “Of course you have, my dear Mrs. Sewell; it is a great pleasure to me to see you here.” “And I may take off my bonnet and my shawl and my gloves and my company manner, as my husband calls it?” “Oh! _you_ have no company manner,” broke in Lucy.