'‘May!’ cried my uncle; ‘why, my dear, there's nobody else to kill, is

there?’ My uncle was rather disappointed, gentlemen, for he thought a

little quiet bit of love-making would be agreeable after the

slaughtering, if it were only to change the subject.

(

‘We have not an instant to lose here,’ said the young lady. ‘He

pointing to the young gentleman in sky-blue) is the only son of the

powerful Marquess of Filletoville.’ '‘Well then, my dear, I'm afraid he'll

never come to the title,’ said my uncle, looking coolly at the young

gentleman as he stood fixed up against the wall, in the cockchafer

fashion that I have described. ‘You have cut off the entail, my love.’ '‘I

have been torn from my home and my friends by these villains,’ said

the young lady, her features glowing with indignation. ‘That wretch

would have married me by violence in another hour.’

‘Confound his impudence!’ said my uncle, bestowing a very

contemptuous look on the dying heir of Filletoville.

‘

‘As you may guess from what you have seen,’ said the young lady,

the party were prepared to murder me if I appealed to any one for

assistance. If their accomplices find us here, we are lost. Two minutes

hence may be too late. The mail!’ With these words, overpowered by

her feelings, and the exertion of sticking the young Marquess of

Filletoville, she sank into my uncle's arms. My uncle caught her up,

and bore her to the house door. There stood the mail, with four long-

tailed, flowing-maned, black horses, ready harnessed; but no

coachman, no guard, no hostler even, at the horses' heads.

Gentlemen, I hope I do no injustice to my uncle's memory, when I

express my opinion, that although he was a bachelor, he had held

some ladies in his arms before this time; I believe, indeed, that he had

rather a habit of kissing barmaids; and I know, that in one or two

instances, he had been seen by credible witnesses, to hug a landlady

in a very perceptible manner. I mention the circumstance, to show

what a very uncommon sort of person this beautiful young lady must

have been, to have affected my uncle in the way she did; he used to

say, that as her long dark hair trailed over his arm, and her beautiful

dark eyes fixed themselves upon his face when she recovered, he felt

so strange and nervous that his legs trembled beneath him. But who

can look in a sweet, soft pair of dark eyes, without feeling queer? I

can't, gentlemen. I am afraid to look at some eyes I know, and that's

the truth of it.

‘You will never leave me,’ murmured the young lady.

‘Never,’ said my uncle. And he meant it too.

The Pickwick Papers