As we had several servants about us in the first place, and as in the second there is not the slightest danger of ladies being treated with incivility by an English crowd, unless through their own fault or indiscretion, of course no objection was made, and our cavaliers galloped away, promising to return within a quarter of an hour.
Scarcely were they out of sight, before I observed a tall, handsome, soldierly man, though in plain clothes, ride past the carriage on a very fine horse, followed by a groom in a plain dark frock, with a cockade in his hat.
It seemed to me on the instant that I had seen his face somewhere before, and that I ought to know him; for the features all seemed familiar, although had it been to save my life, I could not have said where I had met him.
I was torturing my memory on this head in vain—for he was evidently an Englishman, and I had no acquaintance with any English officer—when he rode past a second time, and seemed to be engaged in endeavouring to decipher the arms on our carriage, and his object appeared to be the discovery of who I was; at least, I could not but observe that he looked at me from time to time with a furtive glance from under the brim of his hat, as if he, too, fancied that he knew or remembered me. The same thing happened yet a third time; and then he called his servant to his side, and I saw the man ride up a second afterwards to Judge Selwyn’s footman, who was standing at a few yards’ distance from the carriage, and ask him some question, which he answered by a word or two, when the groom rode away.
The gentleman, on receiving the reply, nodded his head quietly, as if he would have said, “I thought so,” and then he looked at me steadily till he caught my eye, when he raised his hat, made a half military bow, and trotted slowly away.
Caroline’s quick eye caught this action in an instant, and, turning to me suddenly, she cried quickly—
“Ah! Valerie, who is that? that handsome man who bowed to you?—Where have I seen him before?”
“The very question which I was asking myself, Caroline. I am quite sure that I have seen his face, and yet I cannot remember where. It is very strange.”
“Very!” replied a strange, sneering voice, close to my ear, with a slightly foreign accent. “Can you say where you have seen mine, Ingrate?”
I turned my head as quick as lightning; for in answering Caroline, who sat on the side of the carriage next to the military spectacle, I had leaned a little inward; and there, with his effeminate features actually livid with rage, and writhing with impotent malignity, stood Monsieur G—, the infamous divorced husband of Madame d’Albret, and the first cause of almost all my misfortunes.