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"It doesn't force one to take the dreadful step of running away from home all at once. It gives one time to consider, and plan, and make up one's mind. I can tell you this, Launce, if I am to be persuaded into marrying you, the law of Abduction is the only thing that will induce me to do it. You ought to thank the law, instead of abusing it." Launce listened without conviction.
Launce, devouring his breakfast, instantly looked up from his plate, and then, at a second touch from Natalie, looked down again in a violent hurry. After pausing to make sure that she was not noticed, Natalie took up her knife.
"I knew it!" he said, with an oath and hurried out into the grounds to discover the truth for himself. Some little time elapsed before he came back to the house. He had discovered Natalie alone. Not a sign of Launce had rewarded his search. For the hundredth time he had offended Natalie. For the hundredth time he was compelled to appeal to the indulgence of her father and her aunt.
Richard had fortunately made no discoveries; and the matter might safely be trusted, all things considered, to rest where it was. Miss Lavinia might possibly have taken a less hopeful view of the circumstances, if she had known that one of the men-servants at Muswell Hill was in Richard Turlington's pay, and that this servant had seen Launce leave the grounds by the back-garden gate.
Launce instantly entered his protest against wasting a moment longer. Lady Winwood opened her lips to support him. They were both silenced at the same moment by the appearance of one of Mrs. Sancroft's servants, opening the gate of the square. Lady Winwood went forward to meet the man. A suspicion crossed her mind that he might be bringing bad news. "What do you want?" she asked.
He nodded kindly to his nephew; and, declining to pursue the subject, moved away to another part of the room. Turlington's jealous distrust, wrought to the highest pitch of irritability for weeks past, instantly associated the words he had just heard with the words spoken by Launce in the boudoir, which had reminded him that he was not married to Natalie yet.
Did you notice him this morning?" "I? When?" "When your father was telling that story about the man overboard." "No. What did he do? Tell me, Launce." "I'll tell you directly. How did it all end last night? Did your father make any sort of promise?" "You know Richard's way; Richard left him no other choice. Papa had to promise before he was allowed to go to bed." "To let Turlington marry you?"
Apparently conscious that Launce was looking at him though he never turned his head Launce's way he laid his elbow on the table, lifted his arm, and so rested his face on his hand, while the story went on, as to screen it effectually from the young surgeon's view. "The man was brought on board," proceeded Sir Joseph, "sure enough, with a hen-coop on which he had been found floating.
His illustrations to Macklin's Shakespeare come nearer to our subject proper, and here we have the whole Falstaff episode very fully and very humourously illustrated; while Launce and his dog, whom he "would have to behave as a dog at all things," may be compared in our artist's treatment of canine life with his "Black George," the Suffolk gamekeeper.
After first looking attentively at Richard, he took his uncle straight back to the story by means of a question, thus: "You don't mean to say that the captain of the ship threw the man overboard?" "That is just what he did, Launce. The poor wretch was too ill to work his passage.
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