Maitland shrugged his shoulders carelessly, and said, "As you please, sir."
"It shall be as I please, sir; I 'll take care of that. Are you able to say at present to whom my friend can address himself?"
"If your friend will first do the favor to call upon me, I 'll be able by that time to inform him."
"Certainly not; it could never occur to me to make choice of your friend and neighbor's son for such an office."
"Well, I thought not,--I hoped not; and I suspected, besides, that the little fellow with the red whiskers--that major who dined one day at the Abbey--"
Maitland's pale cheek grew scarlet, his eyes flashed with passion, and all the consummate calm of his manner gave way as he said, "With the choice of my friend, sir, you have nothing to do, and I decline to confer further with you."
"Eh, eh! that shell broke in the magazine, did it? I thought it would. I 'll be shot but I thought it would!" And with a hearty laugh, but bitter withal, the old Commodore seized his hat and departed.
Maitland was much tempted to hasten after the Commodore, and demand--imperiously demand--from him an explanation of his last words, whose taunt was even more in the manner than the matter. Was it a mere chance hit, or did the old sailor really know something about the relations between himself and M'Caskey? A second or two of thought reassured him, and he laughed at his own fears, and turned once more to the table to finish his letter to his friend.
"You have often, my dear Carlo, heard me boast that amidst all the shifting chances and accidents of my life, I had ever escaped one signal misfortune,--in my mind, about the greatest that ever befalls a man. I have never been ridiculous. This can be my triumph no longer. The charm is broken! I suppose, if I had never come to this blessed country, I might have preserved my immunity to the last; but you might as well try to keep your gravity at one of the Polichinello combats at Naples as preserve your dignity in a land where life is a perpetual joke, and where the few serious people are so illogical in their gravity, they are the best fun of all. Into this strange society I plunged as fearlessly as a man does who has seen a large share of life, and believes that the human crystal has no side he has not noticed; and the upshot is, I am supposed to have made warm love to a young woman that I scarcely flirted with, and am going to be shot at to-morrow by her father for not being serious in my intentions! You may laugh--you may scream, shout, and kick with laughter, and I almost think I can hear you; but it's a very embarrassing position, and the absurdity of it is more than I can face.