It was his hand that Flora had heard upon the lock when she started from the sofa and fled to her own apartment in a passion of tears, so that when he entered the inner drawing-room it was empty, and thus Quentin knew not—though his heart foreboded—to whom the injurious words of Lady Rohallion had been addressed; but their tenor decided him at once in a preconceived intention of leaving, and for ever, the only home he had now in the world, and almost the only one of which he had any distinct memory.
"This is no longer a place for me, John Girvan, and so sure as God sees and hears me, I shall leave it this very night!" he exclaimed, as with his eyes flashing and full of tears, and his heart now filled only by new, and hitherto unknown emotions of sorrow, bitterness, and mortification (unknown to him at least) he walked to and fro upon the gun-battery, where the 24-pounders of La Bonne Citoyenne faced the waves of the Firth, on which the last rays of a waning moon were shining coldly and palely, especially on the ridge of foam that boiled for ever over the Partan Craig.
"And whither would ye go, Quentin?" asked Girvan, who felt in his honest heart an intense commiseration for the lonely lad, knowing that were he to remain after the insult he had received, and the words he had heard, it would argue a poverty of spirit he would be loth to find in Quentin; "whither would ye go?"
"Away to France, to seek my mother."
"Impossible—it's hostile ground, and once on it you would be made a prisoner by the authorities, and shut up in Bitche, Verdun, or Brisgau, if they did not hang you as a spy, or send you to serve as a private soldier in the Corps Etranger. You must think of another scheme, less rash and romantic."
"I know of none."
"In all the wide world, Quentin," said Girvan, with his nether lip quivering, "ye have no home but this."
"This!" repeated Quentin, grinding his teeth.
"Yes."
"Well—I care not; I will go anywhere from it—the farther away the better!" (And Flora? suggested his heart.)