“Character! bless your heart, so long as you ain't a Frenchman, these people don't care about your character. An English conspirator is the most harmless of all creatures. Had you been a Pole or an Italian, the préfet told me, he'd have known every act of your daily life.”
“And so we shall have to leave this, now?” said Ellen, with some vexation in her tone.
“Not a bit of it, if you don't dislike the surveillance they 'll bestow on you; and it 'll be the very best protection against rogues and pickpockets; and I'll go and say that you're not the man I suspected at all.”
“'Pray take no further trouble on our behalf, sir,” said Bramleigh, stiffly and haughtily.
“Which being interpreted means—make your visit as short as may be, and go your way, Tom Cutbill; don't it?”
“I am not prepared to say, sir, that I have yet guessed the object of your coming.”
“If you go to that, I suspect I 'll be as much puzzled as yourself. I came to see you because I heard you were in my neighborhood. I don't think I had any other very pressing reason. I had to decamp from England somewhat hurriedly, and I came over here to be, as they call it, 'out of the way,' till this storm blows over.”
“What storm? I 've heard nothing of a storm.”
“You 've not heard that the Lisconnor scheme has blown up?—the great Culduff Mining Company has exploded, and blown all the shareholders sky-high?”
“Not a word of it.”