My thoughts were still wandering after Paulina, and I was endeavouring to imagine what she might be about at that precise moment.
Slingsby had lost a very heavy and very absurd bet, on an interesting race run at Grand Cairo between an Irish mare and an Arab horse belonging to Halim Pasha, when the former beat the latter "all to nothing," as Jack phrased it, and he had to hand over 500l. to Morton, our colonel, for booking on a horse which neither of them had ever seen. The same race was offered for the last two years against all England, for ten thousand sovereigns, and, as all the sporting world know, the challenge was not accepted. Blue-devilled by his loss, Jack Slingsby sipped his claret in silence and made wise resolutions which he never intended to keep, with moral reflections which he never could practise, and longed for the Crimea, insensible to the charms of this delightful climate, where, even in January, the narcissus-polyanthus hang in white clusters from the rocks; where the purple lavender flowers in large beds and parterres; where the palmetto spreads its fan-like foliage to the sun; where the gigantic aloe puts forth its leaves, and the prickly pear expands its ponderous bunches, while the wild tulip and the damascus-tree are in full blossom under the gloom of the solemn pine, or the lighter foliage of the cork-tree—and where all is verdure, fragrance, and joy! Yet, amid all this, Jack Slingsby, like the rest of "Ours," sighed for the frozen camp, the battered trenches, and the misery of Sebastopol.
"So you have not got the better of your Spanish fancies, eh?" said he, for lack of something better to talk about; "the charming Paulina—that most rotund of elderly females, her mamma, and all that sort of thing?"
"What leads you to think so?" I asked languidly, as I lay stretched at length on the Windsor chairs, watching the smoke which ascended from my lips to the ceiling.
"It is quite plain, dear Don Ricardo."
"You cannot mimic her, so don't attempt it, Jack; but how is it plain, eh?"
"As clear as when the right is in front, the left is the pivot."
"A technical reply."
"Dick Ramble, my boy, you are quite sad about her, and there is no use in attempting to conceal it," continued Slingsby.
"Not sad, exactly," said I, making an effort to look brave; "never was I fool enough to be sad about any woman yet; there are as good fish, &c., and as for the Spanish girl—try another Cuba, the box is beside you."