Knowing Eugenia as I did, it was sufficient that she had decided.  There was no appeal; so, kissing her again, I wished her a good night, quitted her, and retired to my hotel.  What a night of tumult did I pass!  I was tossed from Emily to Eugenia, like a shuttlecock between two battledores.  The latter never looked so lovely; and to the natural loveliness of her person, was added a grace and a polish, which gave a lustre to her charms, which almost served Emily as I had served the footman.  I never once closed my eyes during the night—­dressed early the next morning, walked about, looked at Chateau Trompette and the Roman ruins—­thought the hour of ten would never strike, and when it did, I struck the same moment at her door.

The man who opened it to me was the same whom I had treated so ill the night before; the moment he saw me, he put himself into an attitude at once of attack, defence, remonstrance, and revenge, all connected with the affair of the preceding evening.

“Ah, ah, vous voila donc! ce n’etoit pas bienfait, Monsieur.”

“Oui,” said I, “tres nettement fait, et voila encore,” slipping a Napoleon into his hand.

“Ca s’arrange tres-joliment, Monsieur,” said the man, grinning from ear to ear, and bowing to the ground.

“C’est Madame, que vous voulez donc?”

“Oui,” said I.

He led, I followed; he opened the door of a breakfast parlour—­“tenez, Madame, voici le Monsieur que m’a renverse hier au soi.”

Eugenia was seated on a sofa, with her boy by her side, the loveliest little fellow I had ever beheld.  His face was one often described, but rarely seen; it was shaded with dark curling ringlets, his mouth, eyes, and complexion had much of his mother, and, vanity whispered me, much more of myself.  I took a seat on the sofa, and with the boy on my knee, and Eugenia by my side, held her hand, while she narrated the events of her life since the time of our separation.

“A few days,” said she, “after your departure for the Flushing expedition, I read in the public prints, that ’if the nearest relation of my mother would call at ——­, in London, they would hear of something to their advantage.’  I wrote to the agent, from whom I learned, after proving my identity, that the two sisters of my mother, who, you may remember, had like sums left them by the will of their relative, had continued to live in a state of single blessedness; that, about four years previous, one of them had died, leaving every thing to the other, and that the other had died only two months before, bequeathing all her property to my mother, or her next heir; or, in default of that, to some distant relation.  I, therefore, immediately came into a fortune of ten thousand pounds, with interest; and I was further informed that a great-uncle of mine was still living, without heirs, and was most anxious that my mother or her heirs should be discovered.  An invitation was therefore sent to me to go down to him, and to make his house my future residence.