“Here, and now,” said Norwood, “if I can only find any one who will act for me.”
“Pray, my Lord, don't go in search of him,” said Trouville, “or we shall despair of seeing you here again.”
“I will give a bail for my reappearance, sir, that you cannot doubt of,” cried Norwood, advancing towards the other with his cane elevated.
A perfect burst of horror broke from the Frenchmen at this threat, and three or four immediately threw themselves between the contending parties.
“But for this, my Lord,” said the old officer, “I should have offered you my services.”
“And I should have declined them, sir,” said Norwood, promptly. “The first peasant I meet with will suffice;” and, so saying, he hurried from the spot, his heart almost bursting with passion. With many a malediction of George—with curses deep and cutting on every one whose misconduct had served to place him in his present position—he took his way towards the high-road.
“What could have happened?” muttered he; “what confounded fit of poltroonery has seized him? a fellow that never wanted pluck in his life! Is it possible that he can have failed now? And this to occur at the very moment they are beggared! Had they been rich, as they were a few months back, I'd have made the thing pay. Ay, by Jove! I 'd have 'coined my blood,' as the fellow says in the play, and written a swingeing check with red ink! And now I have had a bad quarrel, and nothing to come of it! And so to walk the high-roads in search of some one who can load a pistol.”
A stray peasant or two, jogging along to Florence, a postilion with return horses, a shabbily dressed curate, or a friar with a sack behind him, were all that he saw for miles of distance, and he returned once more to interrogate the calessino driver as to the stranger who accompanied him from the city.
Any one whose misfortune it may have been to make inquiries from an Italian vetturino of any fact, no matter how insignificant or unimportant, will sympathize with Norwood's impatience at the evasive and distrustful replies that now met his questions. Although the fact could have no possible concern or interest for him, he prevaricated and contradicted himself half-a-dozen times over, as to the stranger's age, country, and appearance, so that, utterly baffled and provoked, the Viscount turned away and entered the park.
“I, too, shall be reported missing, I suppose,” said he, bitterly, as he walked along a little path that skirted a piece of ornamental water. “By Jupiter! this is a pleasant morning's work, and must have its reparation one day or other.”