Mr. Longcluse was in great spirits. He had grown for a time like the Walter Longcluse of a year before.
They two dined together, and after dinner Mr. Longcluse grew happy, and as he sat with his glass by him, he sang, looking over the waves, a sweet little sentimental song, about ships that pass at sea, and smiles and tears, and “true, boys, true,” and “heaven shows a glimpse of its blue.” And he walks with Sir Richard to the station, and he says, low, as he leans and looks into the carriage window, of which young Arden was the only occupant—
“Be true to me now, and we may make it up yet.”
And so saying, he gives his hand a single pressure as he looks hard in his eyes.
The bell had rung. He was remaining there, he said, for another train. The clapping of the doors had ceased. He stood back. The whistle blew its long piercing yell, and as the train began to glide towards London, the young man saw the white face of Walter Longcluse in deep shadow, as he stood with his back to the lamp, still turned towards him.
The train was now thundering on its course; the solitary lamp glimmered in the roof. He threw himself back, with his foot against the opposite seat.
“Good God! what is one to resolve! All men are cruel when they are exasperated. Might not good yet be made of Longcluse? What creatures women are!—what fools! How easy all might have been made, with the least temper and reflection! What d——d selfishness!”
Uncle David was now in Paris. The moon was shining over that beautiful city. In a lonely street, in a quarter which fashion had long forsaken—over whose pavement, as yet unconscious of the Revolution, had passed, in the glare of torchlight, the carved and emblazoned carriages of an aristocracy, as shadowy now as the courts of the Cæsars—his footsteps are echoing.
A huge house presents its front. He stops and examines it carefully for a few seconds. It is the house of which he is in search.