Page:Lady Barbarity; a romance (IA ladybarbarityrom00snai).pdf/177

 you've got to do it if you are going to reduce this citadel," says she, becoming Captain Grantley on the spot.

Nothing must suffice her but she should fill a warm chair near the fire, with another a yard or two away on which to prop her damaged leg. The Captain at once began to damn his knee with a vigour that was astonishingly lively; called my Lady Barbara a saucy jade and something of a devil into the bargain for letting rebels out in the middle of the night and providing them with pistols. Thereupon I sailed up to him, and opened the rehearsal by asking how his leg did.

"Oh, it is infernal!" cries the Captain with an oath.

"I am sorry for it," says I, sympathetically.

"You will be," says he, grimly, and swore again.

"My dear Captain," says I, with a wistful softness, "it makes me quite dismal, I assure you, to discover you in such a grievous strait." A tear stood in my eye.

"Dear Lady Barbara," says he, "you can tell that to my leg."

"Ah, dear Captain," says I, with soft-breathing tenderness, "I wish you could see into my heart."

"'Twould be more difficult than pearl-fishing in deep seas," says he. "Besides, a heart, they tell me, is a thing you have not got."

"O, that I had not one! It would then be insensible to your masculine perfection that makes such a havoc of it now."