The discussion between them concerning me grew hotter, and I grew as hot as the discussion, in thinking what a figure I was making before that divinely beautiful Lady Arabella. I had clean forgotten Daphne. Lady Hawkshaw lugged in a great variety of extraneous matter, reminding Sir Peter of certain awful predictions concerning his future which had been made by the last chaplain who sailed with him. Sir Peter denounced the chaplain as a sniveling dog. Lady Hawkshaw indulged in some French, at which Lady Arabella laughed behind her hand. The battle royal lasted some time longer, but Lady Hawkshaw’s metal was plainly heavier than Sir Peter’s; and it ended by Sir Peter’s saying to me angrily: “Very well, sir, to oblige my lady I will give you the remaining midshipman’s berth on the _Ajax_, seventy-four. You may go home now, but show yourself aboard the _Ajax_ at Portsmouth, before twelve o’clock on this day week, and be very careful to mind your eye.” I had nerved myself to hear with coolness the refusal of this fiery admiral; but his real kindness, disguised under so much of choler, overcame me. I stammered something and stopped,--that hound of a footman was grinning at me, because my eyes were full of tears, and also, perhaps, because my coat was of cheap make, and my shoes needed attention. But at that moment little Daphne, with the greatest artlessness, came up and slipped her little hand into mine, saying: “He means he is very much obliged to you, uncle, and to you, dear aunt.” I do not know how I got out of the house, but the next thing I knew I was standing on the street outside. I had been told to go home. I had no home now unless the Bull-in-the-Bush tavern be one. But I did not return to the Bull-in-the-Bush, whose tawdry splendors revolted me now, after I had seen Sir Peter Hawkshaw’s imposing house, as much as they had before attracted me. I was tingling with the sense of beauty newly developed in me. I could not forget that exquisite vision of Lady Arabella Stormont, who seemed to my boyish mind more like a white rose-bush in full flower than anything I could call to memory. I made my way instead to the plain, though clean lodgings, where I had spent the years since my parents’ death, with good Betty Green, the widow of Corporal Green, late of my father’s regiment.