But, instead of doing as she bade him, he came right into the door,--into the full blaze of light. He was then a fair boy of eighteen, and I can tell you that his charming figure was shown off to great advantage by the quaint dress of our day,--the tight-fitting Nankeen hose and short dark blue jacket. And when he bared his head he showed fair hair, as glossy and golden as Katherine's own, in a very long queue. I can picture him fidgeting with his sugar-loaf beaver, for he had something great on his mind. "Oh, Will," she whispered, "we shall be discovered." "No matter." "But why?" began Kitty; and suddenly prepared to fly, as the first stroke of twelve rang out painfully clear to her anxious ear. "I'm going with the Admiral, Kitty, and you know what that means." "Yes,--that is, what does it mean?" "It means,--well, it's Admiral Nelson: and it means that I shall never come back at all, or come back a man." "When do you start, Will?" asked Katherine, forgetting all about the minuet and her marquess, and coming forward to take his hands and look into his face. At eighteen it was a beautiful face, but even then so proud that its natural frankness was almost obscured. And yet you forgave its haughtiness, for you felt that such pride would not stoop to anything cowardly or mean, anything that would prevent its keeping itself aloof and aloft. As she took his hands in hers I know how the stern, clean-cut mouth melted into one of the irresistible smiles that such mouths mostly have once in a way. "Oh, Will!" she said, "I was wondering why did you not come to my coming-out ball--you, Will, my best friend." "To see my Lord Dover's triumph when he had won you, Kitty?" he asked almost bitterly: "I could not bear it. No, I should not have come at all if I had not been going by the morning coach with my mother to Portsmouth." "Why, Will, what is Lord Dover to me?" she asked. "He means to marry you." "I don't mean to marry him." "But what will your father say?" "My father will say nothing. I have no need to marry the first lover with a title who presents himself. I am a lord's daughter, passing rich--and passably good-looking, Will?" "Be serious, Kitty." "Indeed I must, and say good-bye, Will," she cried, as the strokes had ceased ringing out from Eastry Tower some two or three minutes, "for the minuet was for twelve o'clock, and I am engaged to Lord Dover--for that only. Good-bye, dear Will." With a sudden impulse she sprang forward, and laying her hands on his shoulders kissed him. Hardly had she finished, when-- "What's this, what's this?" cried a bluff voice, with an accompanying thud of a lame man's stick on the polished oak floor--"Will Hardres off to fight the French! Nay, lad, not so sudden! the coach does not start till six, and Cissy's at school, and your mother going with you. This way, this way!" He led Will into the ball-room and up to the Marquess.