e as the old, fat, wheezy, brown spaniel that
stood upon the broad stone step and welcomed me with tail and tongue.
But while I remained, as it were, stationary--an old-fashioned boy, an
older-fashioned youth, an antiquated man--she altered. Occasionally when
I went to see her she had gone out visiting, and I was left to dream
away the evening in the old window waiting for her return, or, if I knew
which way she came, loitering in the street in case she should be
unattended by the maid who was usually sent to meet or to fetch her when
her father did not go himself.

It was on one of these evenings that I suddenly understood what was the
cause of the undefinable change that I had noticed in her manner some
time before. In the previous week the company had held a court dinner,
and that was the evening when the alderman introduced his son--"My son,
the captain," as he called him--a captain by purchase, and with the
right to wear a brilliant uniform and long moustachios. A chuckle-pated
fellow, for all his scarlet coat and clanking heels, but with a
bullying, insolent air. When the feast was over, and the guests were
preparing to go, it was time for me to go too, for I had been late
helping to make up some of the accounts in the office; and, after taking
my hat off the hook in the passage, turned to the old sitting-room to
look for Mary, that I might say, "Good-night."

It was beyond her time for being about, especially on the court nights,
but to my surprise, as I opened the door she was standing there with
the captain, who was holding her hand. He had no business there, and she
knew it. The other diners were already coming down the stairs at the end
of the passage. He must have stolen down quickly, and she must have been
waiting for him. This all passed through my mind in a moment as I stood
looking at him, such an ugly leer upon his face as he bent over her hand
that I had to clench my fingers till the blood started in the nails to
keep down my rising wrath.

"Hallo! who is this?" he said, as he turned with a swagger, but without
dropping her hand.

"Oh! Richard, I thought you'd gone home long ago. It's only a friend of
my father's, and he's so near-sighted I suppose he did not see anybody
here," she replied in a flutter.

"Confounded little manners," said the captain, staring at me.

I was dumb--and my limbs seemed to be rigid.

"Is he deaf too?" asked the captain with a grin. "Confounded little
manners, really.