This second attachment appears to have been less ardent than the first, for upon weighing the evils of a straitened income to a married man, he thought it better to leave France, assigning to his friends something in his accounts as the cause.

This prevented him from accepting an invitation from the Count of Deux-Ponts to visit him at Paris, couched in the handsomest terms of acknowledgment for the treatment which he had received on board the ALBEMARLE.
The self-constraint which Nelson exerted in subduing this attachment made him naturally desire to be at sea; and when, upon visiting Lord Howe at the Admiralty, he was asked if he wished to be employed, he made answer that he did.

Accordingly in March, he was appointed to the BOREAS, twenty-eight guns, going to the Leeward Islands as a cruiser on the peace establishment.

Lady Hughes and her family went out with him to Admiral Sir Richard Hughes, who commanded on that station.

His ship was full of young midshipmen, of whom there were not less than thirty on board; and happy were they whose lot it was to be placed with such a captain.