"It is not that. All Naples knows her story, and many married ladies in Naples have the same story about themselves. It does not affect her position in society. People would only laugh and think one mad if one attacked her for that. No, it is not that: it is simply--well, I do not wish to be beholden to her. My brother has always been my protector, and he has a sharp sword. And there is Donna Marziani. You English know what is meant by a _duenna_, do you not?" she rattled on in her voluble Italian. She and Will spoke Italian because it was as easy to him as English, and English was so difficult to her. "Need we stand here, then? Why should we not go and sit on one of those stiff-backed couches with the gilt lions' legs which line the room?" "Let us: it will be my declaration of independence." When she and Will moved off in their silent revolution--a revolution almost as shocking to Sicilian ideas as the late horrible Revolution in France--My Lady, seeing me stranded like a fish on the rocks at low water, called to me, "Tubby!" which I resented on so formal an occasion; nor had I yet forgiven her for having kissed me at the dinner-table, though there were plenty--the Admiral himself, as I knew after, and was not too young then to suspect--who would have taken a kiss from Lady Hamilton under even more arduous conditions. Nor was I best pleased to find that she had only called me to lay her hand upon my shoulder in a caressing way while she pursued her conversation with the Admiral. He was saying: "This confounded fellow cannot move without five carriages. I have formed my opinion; I heartily pray I may be mistaken." And then they went on talking about five-and-thirty thousand of the finest troops in the world; forty thousand levies; sending a legion of five thousand by sea; and General Championnet and the spread of pernicious opinions, till I should have yawned if I had not had, as I thought, Captain Troubridge's eye on me. I suppose I must have yawned, for the Queen sent one of her ladies to fetch me. I stole a glance at Will, but he had no eyes save for Donna Rusidda, who was, as I thought, merely angling with him. Then I looked at the captains, but they were far too occupied with great matters to think of a midshipman, unless he was rampantly misbehaving himself. I did not, somehow or other, look at the Admiral: I felt I did not mind him; and then I let myself be spoilt by the beautiful Court ladies--I, who am now a plain half-pay captain, living on a very modest income in a cottage at Walmer. CHAPTER XIV.--What the Admiral wrote of My Lady in his Journal. I was the less inclined to write what I heard between the Admiral and My Lady at the banquet both because it was a delicate matter to write upon such a subject from memory, and the more so because in the Journal the Admiral (if he wrote it) has committed his own meditations to paper. EXTRACT FROM THE JOURNAL.