CHAPTER XLI.
Full many a lady
I have eyed with best regard, and many a time
The harmony of their tongues hath unto bondage
Drawn my too diligent eyes.
But you, oh! you,
So perfect and so peerless, are created Of every
creature’s best.—Shakspeare.
Thou wilt easily conceive, my dear reader, who hast been in my confidence throughout the whole of this history, and whom, though as yet thou hast cause to esteem me but lightly, I already love as my familiar and my friend—thou wilt easily conceive my surprise at meeting so unexpectedly with my old hero of the gambling house. I felt indeed perfectly stunned at the shock of so singular a change in his circumstances since I had last met him. My thoughts reverted immediately to that scene, and to the mysterious connection between Tyrrell and Glanville. How would the latter receive the intelligence of his enemy’s good fortune? was his vengeance yet satisfied, or through what means could it now find vent?
A thousand thoughts similar to these occupied and distracted my attention till morning, when I summoned Bedos into the room to read me to sleep. He opened a play of Monsieur Delavigne’s, and at the beginning of the second scene I was in the land of dreams.
I woke about two o’clock; dressed, sipped my chocolate, and was on the point of arranging my hat to the best advantage, when I received the following note:
“My Dear Pelham,
“Me tibi commendo. I heard this morning, at your hotel, that you were here; my heart was a house of joy at the intelligence. I called upon you two hours ago; but, like Antony, ‘you revel long o’ nights.’ Ah, that I could add with Shakspeare, that you were ‘notwithstanding up.’ I have just come from Paris, that umbilicus terrae, and my adventures since I saw you, for your private satisfaction, ‘because I love you, I will let you know;’ but you must satisfy me with a meeting. Till you do, ‘the mighty gods defend you!’
“Vincent.”
The hotel from which Vincent dated this epistle, was in the same street as my own caravansera, and to this hotel I immediately set off. I found my friend sitting before a huge folio, which he in vain endeavoured to persuade me that he seriously intended to read. We greeted each other with the greatest cordiality.