my dear, I hope you don't mean it,--do you know what you're
saying?'

"'Honor bright, Major!' says I,--'honor bright!' and I gave him a wink at
the same time.

"'Oh, that's it!' said he, 'is it!' and so he went off holding his hands to
his sides with the bare laughing; and your honor knows it wasn't a blessing
she wished him, for all that."

CHAPTER XV.

THE CONFESSION.

"What a strange position this of mine!" thought I, a few mornings after
the events detailed in the last chapter. "How very fascinating in some
respects, how full of all the charm of romance, and how confoundly
difficult to see one's way through!"

To understand my cogitation right, _figurez-vous_, my dear reader, a large
and splendidly furnished drawing-room, from one end of which an orangery
in full blossom opens; from the other is seen a delicious little boudoir,
where books, bronzes, pictures and statues, in all the artistique disorder
of a lady's sanctum, are bathed in a deep purple light from a stained glass
window of the seventeenth century.

On a small table beside the wood fire, whose mellow light is flirting with
the sunbeams upon the carpet, stands an antique silver breakfast-service,
which none but the hand of Benvenuto could have chiselled; beside it sits
a girl, young and beautiful; her dark eyes, beaming beneath their long
lashes, are fixed with an expression of watchful interest upon a pale and
sickly youth, who, lounging upon a sofa opposite, is carelessly turning
over the leaves of a new journal, or gazing steadfastly on the fretted
gothic of the ceiling, while his thoughts are travelling many a mile away.
The lady being the Senhora Inez; the nonchalant invalid, your unworthy
acquaintance, Charles O'Malley.

What a very strange position to be sure.

"Then you are not equal to this ball to-night?" said she, after a pause of
some minutes.

I turned as she spoke; her words had struck audibly upon my ear, but, lost
in my revery, I could but repeat my own fixed thought,--how strange to be
so situated!

"You are really very tiresome, Signor; I assure you, you are. I have
been giving you a most elegant description of the Casino _fete_, and the
beautiful costume of our Lisbon belles, but I can get nothing from you but
this muttered something, which may be very shocking for aught I know. I'm
sure your friend, Major Power, would be much more attentive to me; that
is," added she, archly, "if Miss Dashwood were not present."