Will was quite gallant in his reply: I know what he said. I think we must have discussed every incident of our life in the Two Sicilies during the long years in which we have been neighbours and brothers-in-law on the bleak coast of Kent. He said, "Because they have no charming lady to take them in hand. I had a beautiful young mother, who was brought up in Mediterranean ports, and has never ceased to pine for the sunshine." What a devoted woman Donna Rusidda was we were to know only too well afterwards; but she was not above a woman's curiosity or caprice, and, the Admiral being as usual the feature of the evening, it was not long before she had manœuvred to get the weather side of Will, where, while she was talking to him, she could see the Admiral, and where the great man's eye might occasionally light on her. She answered his polite little speech with a charming smile, but said nothing. So he continued,-- "But you must try harder to learn my language too. You must not say Signor Vill, but Signor Will." "Vill." "No, no; not Vill, but Will." "Oh yes: Ou-ill--Signor Ou-ill." "No, not Signor Ou-ill, but Signor Will." "Signor W-W-Will." "Yes, that is it: Will." "Well, Signor W-Will," she said coquettishly--"I have to prepare my mouth for it, or I cannot say it--I cannot stay with you. I have given my message, and must go back to Her Majesty." "Oh, Donna Rusidda!" he began reproachfully. "Oh, what, Signor W-Will?" "Are you not waiting for some answer from My Lady?" "Perhaps. Have you a message which you wish the Signora Hamilton to give to me?" "None that I would not rather give myself." "But I cannot take messages from a midshipman." "I am not a midshipman," he said, with injured dignity. "You have risen very quickly." "I was always a lieutenant, from the very first time you saw me." "You were never a lieutenant when you inflicted that insult on me: that was a midshipman's trick." "Will you never forget or forgive?" "I have forgiven it, or how would the affair have ended?" "Yes, indeed you did, Signorina," said Will, with warm gratitude in his voice. "Will you forget it?" "I am not sure that I can promise that; but I have offered you my friendship." "That is the same thing," he said, giving her such a look as I should not have thought any woman could resist. In all that assemblage there was no one with high breeding and high courage writ so plainly on his face; and he was so young, so beautiful, so fair in colouring. Even his eyes, his proud blue eyes, had for once lost their hardness. "No, it is not the same thing; I do not want to forget it." "Then I am not completely forgiven?" "Oh yes, you are, Signor W-Will. You are already almost my best friend." "Who is _the_ fortunate person?" "You forget that I have a brother and an uncle," she said, with a touch of dignity.