"Another day I will visit you, so, for the present, adieu."
I was no longer the bashful boy who had so timidly confessed his love to little Ruth Wylie. A few months of soldiering had rubbed the rust completely off me. Thus, when this French girl, with all her imposing presence, her long train, and her hair à la marquise, presented her hand to me, I pressed it to my lips with an air so tender and withal so perfectly confident, that she withdrew it rather hastily and retired.
I was again alone.
Strange and mysterious was the power that lurked in those lovely eyes—in the slow droop of the fringed lids, and their upward sweep when they flashed in smiles upon me.
I lay back in my easy-chair and closed my eyes, but they still seemed to see the face and form of Jacqueline de Broglie.
CHAPTER VI.
BOURGNEUF.
The chateau of Bourgneuf, within which I so singularly found myself an inhabitant, stands* on the north slope of a hill, about a mile from the old highway that leads from Dol to Rennes, the capital of Brittany, where bourg signifies especially a village or residence.
* We may now say stood, as it was demolished in the wars subsequent to the Revolution.
It was a fabric of striking aspect, but of large and irregular proportions, having been built in the days of local war and turbulence, when the lords of Bourgneuf kept constantly a numerous body of armed men about them. As the household consisted now only of the widowed countess (then at St. Malo), her niece, Mademoiselle de Broglie, and a few servants, for the young count was serving with his regiment, but a small portion of this great mansion was inhabited, and thus a melancholy stillness reigned in its long, shady galleries, great suites of apartments, and round towers, the bases of which were washed by the waters of a lake.