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"You're quite wrong," I exclaimed indignantly, contrasting Jervis's hideous presentment with the comely original. "She is an exceedingly good-looking girl, and her manners all that a lady's should be. A little stiff, perhaps, but then I am only an acquaintance almost a stranger." "But," Jervis persisted, "what is she like, in appearance I mean. Short? fat? sandy? Give us intelligible details."
It was also a period marked for him, professionally, less by distinguished service than by that perfection of military organization, that combination of dignified yet not empty pomp with thorough and constant readiness, which was so eminently characteristic of all the phases of Jervis's career, and which, when the rare moments came, was promptly transformed into unhesitating, decisive, and efficient action.
Jervis's room, not forgetting her closet, my own little bed-chamber, the green-room, and in each of the others, I blessed God for my past escapes, and present happiness; and the good woman was quite affected with the zeal and pleasure with which I made my thankful acknowledgments to the divine goodness.
And here I recalled Jervis's words: "The girl must have been in it if the father was." It was a dreadful thought, even though only speculatively uttered, and my heart rejected it; rejected it with indignation that rather surprised me. And this notwithstanding that the somber black-robed figure that my memory conjured up was one that associated itself with the idea of mystery and tragedy.
She was glad that there was nothing of that sort in Jervis's letter, and yet she longed with a piteous, aching longing to feel once more his arms clasping her close, his lips trembling on hers.... At last her mother asked her casually, "Has Jervis Blake written to you, my darling?" And she said, "Yes, mother; once. I think he's busy, getting his outfit."
When war came, however, he left his seat, ready to aid his country with his sword in the quarrel from which he had sought to keep her. Having in the mean time risen from the rank of captain to that of rear-and of vice-admiral, Jervis's first service, in 1794, was in the Caribbean Sea, as commander of the naval part of a joint expedition of army and navy to subdue the French West India islands.
The latter at his first interview with Nelson, nearly two months after his arrival on the station, so that time enough had elapsed to mature his opinion, asked him to remain under his command, as a junior admiral, when he received his promotion. Having regard to Jervis's own high endowments, it was not then in the power of the British Navy to pay an officer of Nelson's rank a higher compliment.
He took a couple of papers from his bundle and silently handed one to me and the other to Thorndyke. Jervis's ominous manner, naturally enough, alarmed me not a little. I opened the paper with a nameless dread.
Early in the new week, Emily had accepted Sir Jervis's proposal, and had so interested the bookseller to whom she had been directed to apply, that he took it on himself to modify the arbitrary instructions of his employer. "The old gentleman has no mercy on himself, and no mercy on others," he explained, "where his literary labors are concerned. You must spare yourself, Miss Emily.
By joining one or two of them together, we have been able to make out the general character of the object of which they formed parts. My assistant who was formerly a watch-maker judged that object to be the thin crystal glass of a lady's watch, and this, I think, was Jervis's opinion.
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