With a sudden impulse Beauchamp held out his hand to him, and shook his heartily, and that grasp seemed to say, "I know you now to the heart. We are friends."
Ned Hayward was a little surprised at this enthusiastic burst of Mr. Beauchamp for he had set him down for what is generally called a very gentlemanlike person, which means, in the common parlance of the world, a man who has either used up every thing like warm feeling, or has never possessed it, and who, not being troubled with any emotions, suffers polite manners and conventional habits to rule him in and out. With his usual rapid way of jumping at conclusions--which he often found very convenient, though to say the truth he sometimes jumped over the right ones--he said to himself at once, "Well, this is really a good fellow, I do believe, and a man of some heart and soul."
But though Beauchamp's warm shake of the hand had led him to this conviction, and he thought he began to understand him, yet Ned Hayward was a little curious as to a question which his new friend had asked him some time before. He had answered it, it is true, by telling him that he took care not to fall in love; but he fancied that Mr. Beauchamp had inquired in a peculiar tone, and that he must have had some meaning more than the words implied, taken in their simple and straightforward application.
"Come now, tell me, Beauchamp," he said, after just five seconds consideration, "what made you ask if I had ever tried falling in love by way of amusement? Did you ever hear any story of my being guilty of such practices? If you have it was no true one--at least for six or seven years past."
"Oh, no," replied Beauchamp laughing, "I have had no means of learning your secret history. I only inquired because, if you have never tried that pleasant amusement, you will soon have a capital opportunity. Sir John Slingsby's daughter is one of the loveliest girls I ever saw."
"What, old Jack with a daughter!" exclaimed Ned Hayward, and then added after a moment's thought, "By the way, so he had. I remember her coming to see him when we were at Winchester. He was separated from her mother, who was a saint, I recollect. Nobody could accuse old Jack of that himself, and his daughter used to come and see him at times. A pretty little girl she was; I think five or six years old. Let me see, she must be about sixteen or seventeen now; for that is just ten years ago, when I was an ensign."