Nothing could have been more delightful to the dowager than the Captain's manner of opening the campaign on the morning after his arrival. They had breakfasted early this time, for Hector insisted that he was well enough to get up with the birds if necessary, and that so far as any claim to feminine compassion or to sick-leave went, he was the veriest impostor in existence. It was after the little party had dawdled considerably over the breakfast-table, and when Cecil had departed to hold solemn council with the cook, that Hector addressed his relative: "Now, my dear auntie," he said, "it's essentially necessary that you and I should understand each other. In the first place, I adore Fortinbras. I think it the most delightful place in the universe; and if the possessor of that delicious old castle would only be good enough to conceive an aversion for it, or find himself hopelessly insolvent, or something of that kind, I'd buy it of him to-morrow--Consols have risen an eighth since last Tuesday, and it's a good time for selling out--and restore it. Queen Elizabeth's drawing-room would make an admirable billiard-room, if it only had those necessary trifles--a floor and a ceiling. I'd make my hunting-stables out of the banqueting-hall--imagine a loose box with a wall four feet thick!--and I'd sleep in the topmost chamber of the great Norman tower, with a flag-staff swaying close above my head, and a general sensation of inhabiting a balloon. But all this is beside the question, auntie. What I want to say is that I have fallen desperately in love with Fortinbras, and as I am likely to stay here till you become unutterably weary of my society, I must insist upon your accepting this cheque which I wrote this morning--for you know of old what an expensive fellow I am, and I should feel perfectly miserable if I felt myself sponging on you without the least chance of returning your hospitality." The Captain crumpled the folded cheque into his aunt's hand. The widow began some vague protest, but her nephew suffocated her scruples by a sonorous kiss; and whatever objection she urged against the receipt of his money were lost in the luxuriance of his beard.