“Poor Tony!—give him my love, Alice, and tell him I shall often think of him,—as often as ever I think of bygone days and all their happiness.”
“And why must it be Tony that I spoke of?” said Alice, rising, while a deep crimson flush covered her face and brow. “I think Master Tony has shown us latterly that he has forgotten the long ago, and has no wish to connect us with thoughts of the future.”
CHAPTER XXX. CONSPIRATORS
In one of those low-ceilinged apartments of a Parisian hôtel which modern luxury seems peculiarly to affect, decorating the walls with the richest hangings, and gathering together promiscuously objects of art and virtù, along with what can minister to voluptuous ease, Maitland and Caffarelli were now seated. They had dined, and their coffee stood before them on a table spread with a costly dessert and several bottles, whose length of neck and color indicated choice liquor.
They lounged in the easiest of chairs in the easiest of attitudes, and, as they puffed their havannahs, did not ill-represent in tableau the luxurious self-indulgence of the age we live in. For let us talk as we will of progress and mental activity, be as boastful as we may about the march of science and discovery, in what are we so really conspicuous as in the inventions that multiply ease, and bring the means of indulgence within the reach of even moderate fortune?
As the wood fire crackled and flared on the ample hearth, a heavy plash of hail struck the window, and threatened almost to smash it.
“What a night!” said Maitland, drawing closer to the blaze. “I say, Carlo mio, it's somewhat cosier to sit in this fashion than be toddling over the Mont Cenis in a shabby old sledge, and listening to the discussion whether you are to spend the night in the 'Refuge No. One, or No. Two.'”
“Yes,” said Caffarelli, “it must have been a great relief to you to have got my telegram in Dublin, and to know that you need not cross the Alps.”
“If I could only have been certain that I understood it aright, I 'd have gone straight back to the north from whence I came; but there was a word that puzzled me,—the word calamità. Now we have not yet arrived at the excellence of accenting foreign words in our telegraph offices; and as your most amiable and philosophical of all nations has but the same combination of letters to express an attraction and an affliction, I was sorely puzzled to make out whether you wrote with or without an accent on the last syllable. It made all the difference in the world whether you say events are a 'loadstone' or a 'misfortune.' I gave half an hour to the study of the passage, and then came on.”