“You are scarcely fair to us,” said Jack, laughing. “You have been singularly unlucky in your English acquaintance.”
“No. I have met a great deal of kindness, but always after a certain interval of doubt—almost of mistrust. I tell you frankly, you are the very first Englishman with whom I have ventured to talk freely on so slight an acquaintance, and it has been to me an unspeakable relief to do it.”
“I am proud to think you had that confidence in me.”
“You yourself suggested it. You began to tell me of your plans and hopes, and I could not resist the temptation to follow you. A French hussar is about as outspoken an animal as an English sailor, so that we were well met.”
“Are you still in the service?”
“No; I am in what we call disponibilité, I am free till called on—and free then if I feel unwilling to go back.”
The Frenchman now passed on to speak of his life as a soldier,—a career so full of strange adventures and curious incidents that Jack was actually grieved when they glided into the harbor of Holyhead, and the steamer's bell broke up the narrative.
CHAPTER XX. A MORNING OF PERPLEXITIES.
Colonel Bramleigh turned over and over, without breaking the seal, a letter which, bearing the postmark of Rome and in a well-known hand, he knew came from Lady Augusta.