“Why, you see,” returned the midshipman, “Lord Hood had a long conference with Howard Etherton, which satisfied his lordship that Howard’s father, Sir Godfrey Etherton, was little Mabel’s uncle. Though Howard did all he could to persuade the Admiral that Mr. Granby Arden was never married—but his lordship said he knew better—he did not pretend to say that he knew he left children, but he felt convinced that the contents of the casket given me by Mabel’s mother would sufficiently explain the matter. ‘You are very young, Master Thornton,’ said the Admiral to me afterwards, ‘to be concerned in an affair of this sort; but as it appears the wish of the Duchesse de Coulancourt that, young as you are, you should have the care of this child and this casket, I will not alter her desires. When you reach Plymouth or Portsmouth, proceed to London, take the casket, which is sealed, to Mr. Joseph Stanmore, my solicitor, and a most eminent man; give him also this letter,’ handing one to me, ‘and then be guided by him.’ Thus you see, O’Loughlin, my course is properly chalked out. Mr. Stanmore lives in Cavendish Square; so, leaving Mabel with Madame Volney, I shall go up to London as soon as we reach Plymouth.” Captain O’Loughlin seemed buried in thought; at last he looked up, saying— “You are in love with Agatha Volney!” The midshipman burst into so loud and hearty a laugh, that it startled the man at the wheel:— “Well, upon my honour, Captain O’Loughlin——” “Oh, bother with your Captain! If you go on with any more of that nonsense, I must give you up. Call me Patrick or O’Loughlin, but to the deuce with my captainship! What did you laugh in that manner for? by Jove, you shook all the wind out of the royals!” “The idea of a boy, scarcely seventeen, in love with a full-grown Demoiselle Française, of nineteen! You are dreaming, or, what’s deuced more likely, you are in love with her yourself.” “Devil a doubt of it, my lad, I confess; but you look so sweet at one another. Isn’t there the other little girl? She will, in four or five years, be tolerably good looking; she has fine eyes, at all events. She will never forget you, and, by Jove, you may depend on it, she will have lots of cash!” “By Jove, O’Loughlin, you are pitching into the future, like a jolly boat in a head sea—manufacturing a wife for me five or six years off. I don’t intend,” continued our hero, “to get married till I am a post captain—perhaps an admiral.” “Tare and nouns! If you wait till you are an admiral, with perhaps a leg and an arm or an eye less than your complement, she must be a tidy craft that will take you in tow. Hollo! There’s a squall!”