“We don’t know where he has stayed. I have thought all along he was as likely to be in England as elsewhere: there’s no place a man’s safer in, well concealed. The very fact of his wife and daughters remaining in this frontier town would be nearly enough to prove that he was still in England.”
“Then why on earth did he stay there?” retorted the Squire. “Why has he not got away before?”
“I don’t know. Might fear there was danger perhaps in making the attempt. He has lain perdu in some quiet corner; and now that he thinks the matter has partly blown over and the scent is less keen, he means to come over. That’s what his wife has waited for.”
The Squire seemed to grasp the whole at once. “I wonder when he will be here?”
“Within a day or two, you may be sure, or not at all,” said Mr. Brandon, with a nod. “She’ll write to stop his coming, if she knows where to write to. The sight of Johnny Ludlow has startled her. You were a great muff to let yourself be seen, young Johnny.”
“Yes, sir, I know I was.”
“Live and learn, live and learn,” said he, bringing out his tin box. “One cannot put old heads upon young shoulders.”
Sunday morning. After breakfast I and Mr. Brandon were standing under the porte-cochère, looking about us. At the banking house opposite; at a man going into the chemist’s shop with his hand tied up; at the marchand-de-coco with his gay attire and jingling bells and noisy tra-la-la-la: at anything, in short, there might be to see, and so while away the half-hour before church-time. The Squire had gone strolling out, saying he should be back in time for service. People were passing down towards the port, little groups of them in twos and threes; apart from the maid-servants in their white caps, who were coming back from mass. One of the hotel waiters stood near us, his white napkin in his hand. He suddenly remarked, with the easy affability of the French of his class (which, so far as I know, and I have seen more of France since then, never degenerates into disrespect), that some of these people might be expecting friends by the excursion boat, and were going down to see it come in.