CHAPTER LX.
PRELIMINARIES.
I awoke refreshed on the following morning, and came down to breakfast with a lighter heart than I had even hoped for. A secret feeling that all would go well had somehow taken possession of me, and I longed for O’Shaughnessy’s coming, trusting that he might be able to confirm my hopes. His servant informed me that the major had been absent since daybreak, and left orders that he was not to be waited for at breakfast.
I was not destined, however, to pass a solitary time in his absence, for every moment brought some new arrival to visit me; and during the morning the colonel and every officer of the regiment not on actual duty came over. I soon learned that the feeling respecting Trevyllian’s conduct was one of unmixed condemnation among my own corps, but that a kind of party spirit which had subsisted for some months between the regiment he belonged to and the 14th had given a graver character to the affair, and induced many men to take up his views of the transaction; and although I heard of none who attributed my absence to any dislike to a meeting, yet there were several who conceived that, by my going at the time, I had forfeited all claim to satisfaction at his hands.
“Now that Merivale is gone,” said an officer to me as the colonel left the room, “I may confess to you that he sees nothing to blame in your conduct throughout; and even had you been aware of how matters were circumstanced, your duty was too imperative to have preferred your personal consideration to it.”
“Does any one know where Conyers is?” said Baker.
“The story goes that Conyers can assist us here. Conyers is at Zaza la Mayor, with the 28th; but what can he do?”
“That I’m not able to tell you; but I know O’Shaughnessy heard something at parade this morning, and has set off in search of him on every side.”
“Was Conyers ever out with Trevyllian?”
“Not as a principal, I believe. The report is, however, that he knows more about him than other people, as Tom certainly does of everybody.”