Is not that our hero's voice, which I hear on the stairs ?' It was Lord Colambre.

His lordship had by this time become a constant visitor at Lady Dashfort's.

Not that he had forgotten, or that he meant to disregard his friend Sir James Brooke's parting words.

He promised himself faithfully, that if anything should occur to give him reason to suspect designs, such as those to which the warning pointed, he would be on his guard, and would prove his generalship by an able retreat.

But to imagine attacks where none were attempted, to suspect ambuscades in the open country, would be ridiculous and cowardly.
'No,' thought our hero; 'Heaven forfend I should be such a coxcomb as to fancy every woman who speaks to me has designs upon my precious heart, or on my more precious estate!' As he walked from his hotel to Lady Dashfort's house, ingeniously wrong, he came to this conclusion, just as he ascended the stairs, and just as her ladyship had settled her future plan of operations.
After talking over the nothings of the day, and after having given two or three CUTS at the society of Dublin, with two or three compliments to individuals, who, she knew, were favourites with his lordship, she suddenly turned to him-- 'My lord, I think you told me, or my own sagacity discovered, that you want to see something of Ireland, and that you don't intend, like most travellers, to turn round, see nothing, and go home content.' Lord Colambre assured her ladyship that she had judged him rightly, for, that nothing would content him but seeing all that was possible to be seen of his native country.