"News!"

She looked at me fixedly, and then continued, her voice so low that I was
forced to bend over:

"Yes. You were not told that Patty Swain fell in a faint when she heard
of your disappearance. You were not told that the girl was ill for a
week afterwards. Ah, Richard, I fear you are a sad flirt. Nay, you may
benefit by the doubt,--perchance you are going home to be married."

You may be sure that this intelligence, from Dorothy's lips, only
increased my trouble and perplexity.

"You say that Patty has been ill?"

"Very ill," says she, with her lips tight closed.

"Indeed, I grieve to hear of it," I replied; "but I cannot think that my
accident had anything to do with the matter."

"Young ladies do not send their fathers to coffee-houses to prevent duels
unless their feelings are engaged," she flung back.

"You have heard the story of that affair, Dorothy. At least enough of it
to do me justice."

She was plainly agitated.

"Has Lord Comyn--"

"Lord Comyn has told you the truth," I said; "so much I know."

Alas for the exits and entrances of life! Here comes the footman.

"Mr. Fox," said he, rolling the name, for it was a great one.

Confound Mr. Fox! He might have waited five short minutes.

It was, in truth, none other than that precocious marvel of England who
but a year before had taken the breath from the House of Commons, and had
sent his fame flying over the Channel and across the wide Atlantic; the
talk of London, who set the fashions, cringed not before white hairs, or
royalty, or customs, or institutions, and was now, at one and twenty,
Junior Lord of the Admiralty--Charles James Fox. His face was dark,
forbidding, even harsh--until he smiled. His eyebrows were heavy and
shaggy, and his features of a rounded, almost Jewish mould. He put me
in mind of the Stuarts, and I was soon to learn that he was descended
from them.

As he entered the room I recall remarking that he was possessed of the
supremest confidence of any man I had ever met. Mrs. Manners he greeted
in one way, Mr. Marmaduke in another, and Mr. Walpole in still another.
To Comyn it was "Hello, Jack," as he walked by him. Each, as it were,
had been tagged with a particular value.

Chagrined as I was at the interruption, I was struck with admiration.
For the smallest actions of these rare men of master passions so compel
us. He came to Dorothy, whom he seemed not to have perceived at first,
and there passed between them