Change the route we did, for, going on board the steamer at Düsseldorf, there, on the deck, stood the Tressillian. Telfer turned sharp on his heel, and went back as he came. "I'll be shot if I go down the Rhine with her. Let's cut across into France." Cut across we did, but we stopped at Brussels on our way; and when at last we caught sight of the tops of the fir-trees around Essellau, Telfer took a long whiff at his pipe with an air of contentment. "I should say we're safe now. She'll hardly come pig-sticking into the middle of Swabia."
II.
VIOLET TRESSILLIAN.
Essellau was a very jolly place, with thick woods round it, and the river Beersbad running in sight; and his pretty sister, the Comtesse Virginie, his good wines, and good sport, made Von Edenburgh's a pleasant house to visit at. Marc himself, who is in the Austrian service (he was winged at Montebello the other day by a rascally Zouave, but he paid him off for it, as I hope his countrymen will eventually pay off all the Bonapartists for their galimatias)—Marc himself was a jolly fellow, a good host, a keen shot, and a capital écarté player, and made us enjoy ourselves at Essellau as he had done before, hunting and shooting with Telfer down at Torwood.
"I've some countrywomen of yours here, Telfer," said Marc, after we'd talked over his English loves, given him tiding of duchesses and danseuses, and messages from no end of pretty women that he'd flirted with the Christmas before. "They're some friends of my mother's, and when they were at Baden-Baden last year, Virginie struck up a desperate young lady attachment with one of them——"
"Are they good-looking?—because, if they are, they may be drysalters' daughters, and I shan't care," interrupted Fred.
Telfer stroked his moustache with a contemptuous smile—he wouldn't have looked at a drysalter's daughter if she'd had all the beauty of Amphitrite.
"Come and see," said Marc. "Virginie will think you're neglecting her atrociously."
Horribly bored to be going to meet some Englishwomen who might turn out to be Smiths or Joneses, and would, to a dead certainty, spoil all his pleasure in pig-sticking, shooting, and écarté, by flirting with him whether he would or no, the Major strode along corridors and galleries after Von Edenburgh. When at length we reached the salon where Virginie and her mother and friends were, Telfer lifted his eyes from the ground as the door opened, started as if he'd been shot, and stepped back a pace or two, with an audible, "If that isn't the very devil!"