“You really are too bad! You’ve never listened to one word I’ve been telling you, but keep continually staring with your eyes here and there, turning this way and looking that, and with a dull, vacant, and unmeaning smile, answering at random, in the most provoking manner. There now, pray pay attention, and tell me what that means.” As she said this, she pointed with her fan to where a dragoon officer, in splashed and spattered uniform, was standing talking to some three or four general officers. “But here comes the duke; it can’t be anything of consequence.”
At the same instant the Duke of Wellington passed with the Duchess of Richmond on his arm.
“No, Duchess; nothing to alarm you. Did you say ice?”
“There, you heard that, I hope!” said Inez; “there is nothing to alarm us.”
“Go to General Picton at once; but don’t let it be remarked,” said an officer, in a whisper, as he passed close by me.
“Inez, I have the greatest curiosity to learn what that new arrival has to say for himself; and if you will permit me, I’ll leave you with Lady Gordon for one moment—”
“Delighted, of all things. You are without exception, the most tiresome—Good-by.”
“Sans adieu,” said I, as I hurried through the crowd towards an open window, on the balcony outside of which Sir Thomas Picton was standing.
“Ah, Mr. O’Malley, have you a pencil? There, that’ll do. Ride down to Etterbeeck with this order for Godwin. You have heard the news, I suppose, that the French are in advance? The Seventy-ninth will muster in the Grando Place. The Ninety-second and the Twenty-eighth along the Park and the Boulevard. Napoleon left Fresnes this morning. The Prussians have fallen back. Zeithen has been beaten. We march at once.”
“To-morrow, sir?”