y, honestly, I should be glad if your father's son could win my
niece; as for fortune, she will be richly dowered if I make her my
heiress. Only yesterday I heard that coal had been found on my Scotch
estates, and, if that be true, it will raise my income many thousands
per annum."

"May you long live to enjoy your wealth, Sir Oswald!" said the young
man, so heartily that tears stood in the old baronet's eyes.

But there was one thing the gallant captain did not confess. He did not
tell Sir Oswald Darrell--what was really the truth--that he was over
head and ears in debt, and that this visit to Darrell Court was the last
hope left to him.

CHAPTER X.

PAULINE STILL INCORRIGIBLE.

Sir Oswald lingered over his wine. It was not every day that he found a
companion so entirely to his taste as Captain Langton. The captain had a
collection of anecdotes of the court, the aristocracy, and the
mess-room, that could not be surpassed. He kept his own interest well in
view the whole time, making some modest allusions to the frequency with
which his society was sought, and the number of ladies who were disposed
to regard him favorably. All was narrated with the greatest skill,
without the least boasting, and Sir Oswald, as he listened with delight,
owned to himself that, all things considered, he could not have chosen
more wisely for his niece.

A second bottle of fine old port was discussed, and then Sir Oswald
said:

"You will like to go to the drawing-room; the ladies will be there. I
always enjoy forty winks after dinner."

The prospect of a _tete-a-tete_ with Miss Darrell did not strike the
captain as being a very rapturous one.

"She is," he said to himself, "a magnificently handsome girl, but
almost too haughty to be bearable. I have never, in all my life, felt so
small as I do when she speaks to me or looks at me, and no man likes
that sort of thing."

But Darrell Court was a magnificent estate, the large annual income was
a sum he had never even dreamed of, and all might be his--Sir Oswald had
said so; his, if he could but win the proud heart of the proudest girl
it had ever been his fortune to meet. The stake was well worth going
through something disagreeable for.

"If she were only like other women," he thought, "I should know how to
manage her; but she seems to live in the clouds."

The plunge had to be made, so the captain summoned all his courage, and
went to the drawing-room. The picture there