“To be sure he is; didn’t I tell you that before? Confound it, what a head I have! Why, man, he’s come out as deputy adjutant-general; but for him I should not have got renewed leave.”
“And Miss Dashwood, is she here?”
“Yes, she came with him. By Jove, how handsome she is,—quite a different style of thing from our dark friend, but, to my thinking, even handsomer. Hammersley seems of my opinion, too.”
“How! Is Hammersley at Lisbon?”
“On the staff here. But, confound it, what makes you so red, you have no ill-feeling towards him now. I know he speaks most warmly of you; no later than last night, at Sir George’s—”
What Power was about to add I know not, for I sprang from my chair with a sudden start, and walked to the window, to conceal my agitation from him.
“And so,” said I, at length regaining my composure in some measure, “Sir George also spoke of my name in connection with the senhora?”
“To be sure he did. All Lisbon does. What can you mean? But I see, my dear boy; you know you are not of the strongest, and we’ve been talking far too long. Come now, Charley, I’ll say good-night. I’ll be with you at breakfast to-morrow, and tell you all the gossip; meanwhile promise me to get quietly to bed, and so good-night.”
Such was the conflicting state of feeling I suffered from that I made no effort to detain Power. I longed to be once more alone, to think, calmly if I could, over the position I stood in, and to resolve upon my plans for the future.
My love for Lucy Dashwood had been long rather a devotion than a hope. My earliest dawn of manly ambition was associated with the first hour I met her. She it was who first touched my boyish heart, and suggested a sense of chivalrous ardor within me; and even though lost to me forever, I could still regard her as the mainspring of my actions, and dwell upon my passion as the thing that hallowed every enterprise of my life.