hour, and that the captain could wait for no man. M. de Tourville was obliged to take his departure without this precious packet. Mrs. Percy was the only person in the family who had the humanity to pity him. He was too little of a soldier for Godfrey’s taste, too much of a courtier for Mr. Percy, too frivolous for Caroline, and too little romantic for Rosamond. “So,” said Rosamond, “here was a fine beginning of a romance with a shipwreck, that ends only in five square merchants, who do not lose even a guilder of their property, and a diplomatist, with whom we are sure of nothing but that he has lost a bundle of papers for which nobody cares!” In a few days the remembrance of the whole adventure began to fade from her fancy. M. de Tourville, and his snuff-box, and his essences, and his flattery, and his diplomacy, and his lost packet, and all the circumstances of the shipwreck, would have appeared as a dream, if they had not been maintained in the rank of realities by the daily sight of the wreck, and by the actual presence of the Dutch sailors, who were repairing the vessel. CHAPTER II. A few days after the departure of M. de Tourville, Commissioner Falconer, a friend, or at least a relation of Mr. Percy’s, came to pay him a visit. As the commissioner looked out of the window and observed the Dutch carpenter, who was passing by with tools under his arm, he began to talk of the late shipwreck. Mr. Falconer said he had heard much of the successful exertions and hospitality of the Percy family on that occasion--regretted that he had himself been called to town just at that time--asked many questions about the passengers on board the vessel, and when M. de Tourville was described to him, deplored that Mr. Percy had never thought of trying to detain this foreigner a few days longer. For, argued the commissioner, though M. de Tourville might not be an accredited chargé d’affaires, yet, since he was a person in some degree in an official capacity, and intrusted with secret negotiations, government might have wished to know something about him. “And at all events,” added the commissioner, with a shrewd smile, “it would have been a fine way of paying our court to a certain great man.” “So, commissioner, you still put your trust in great men?” said Mr. Percy. “Not in all great men, but in some,” replied the commissioner; “for instance, in your old friend, Lord Oldborough, who, I’m happy to inform you, is just come into our neighbourhood to Clermont-park, of which he has at last completed the purchase, and has sent down his plate and pictures.--Who knows but he may make Clermont-park his summer residence, instead of his place in Essex? and if he should, there’s no saying of what advantage it might be, for I have it from the very best authority, that his lordship’s influence in _a certain quarter_ is greater than ever. Of course, Mr. Percy, you will wait upon Lord Oldborough, when he comes to this part of the country?”