Behind the ostentation of civility, their words were daggers.
For it chanced, that the young earl, after a period of refuge at his Welsh castle, supposing, as he well might, that his latest mad freak of the proposal of his hand and title to the strange girl in a quadrille at a foreign castle had been forgotten by her, and the risks of annoyance on the subject had quite blown over, returned to town, happy in having done the penance for his impulsiveness, and got clean again--that is to say, struck off his fetters and escaped from importunities--the very morning of the day when Lord Levellier sprang upon him! It shows the old campaigner's shrewdness in guessing where his prey would come, and not putting him on his guard by a call at his house.

Out of the window he looked for all the hours of light during an entire fortnight.

'In the service of my sister's child,' he said.

'To save him from the cost of maintaining her,' say his enemies.

At any rate he did it.
He was likely to have done the worse which I suspect.
Now, the imparting of the wonderful news to Admiral Baldwin Fakenham was, we read, the whiff of a tropical squall to lay him on his beam ends.