"What the devil has my forgiveness to do with it? You have not injured me. I wish you extremely happy."
"How kind you are! I do not deserve to be happy!"
"You are very unlikely to be," said Barbara, somewhat dryly. "George will make you a damnable husband."
"Oh no, no! If only he is not killed!" Lucy shuddered.
It was some time before she could regain her composure, and nearly an hour before she left the house. Worth had ordered the horses to be put to, and undertook to escort her to her uncle's lodgings. Judith and Barbara found themselves alone at last.
"Well!" Barbara said. "You will allow that at least I never contracted a secret marriage!"
"I have never been so deceived by anyone in my life!" Judith replied, in a shocked tone.
Chapter Twenty-One
Colonel Audley reached the village of Waterloo a few minutes before midnight. The road through the Forest of Soignes, though roughly paved down the centre, was in a bad state, the heavy rainfall having turned the uncobbled portions on either side of the pave into bogs which in places were impassable. Wagons and tilt carts were some of them so deeply embedded in mud, and some overturned after coming into collision with the Belgian cavalry in their flight earlier in the day. In the darkness it was necessary for a horseman to pick his way carefully. The contents of the wagons in some cases strewed the road; here and there a cart, with two of its wheels in the air, lay across the pave; and several horses which had fallen in one of the mad rushes for safety had been shot, and now sprawled in the mud at the sides of the chaussee. The rain dripped ceaselessly from the leaves of the beech trees; the moonlight was obscured by heavy clouds; and only by the glimmer of lantern slung on the wagons lining the road was it possible to discern the way.
At Waterloo, lights burned in many of the cottage windows, for there was not a dwelling-place in the village, or in any of the hamlets nearby, which did not house a general and his staff, or senior officers who had been fortunate enough to secure a bed or a mattress under cover. The tiny inn owned by Veuve Bedonghien, opposite the church, was occupied by the Duke, and here the Colonel dismounted. A figure loomed up to meet him. "Is it yourself, sir?" his groom enquired anxiously, holding up a lantern. "Eh, if that's not his lordship's Rufus!"