Mr. John Catt was not well-mannered, but he was good-hearted and stout-hearted.  He was one of those rough young gentlemen who pride themselves upon “having no nonsense about them.”  He was downright in all things, even in love-making.  He took, therefore, a very early opportunity of asking his betrothed “what this all meant about Monsieur de Gars?” and of observing, “She had only to say the word, and he was ready to go.”

This was very brutal, and it is not in the least to be wondered at that the young lady resented it.

I am, as the reader will have perceived, only touching now and then upon the histories of the people who passed through Mrs. Rowe’s highly respectable establishment while I was in the habit of putting up there.  This John Catt was told he was very cruel, and that he might go; Mrs. Cockayne resolutely refused to give up the delights and advantages of the society of the Vicomte de Gars; the foolish girl was—­well, just as foolish as her mamma; and finally, in a storm that shook the boarding-house almost to its respectable foundations, the Cockayne party broke up—­not before the Vicomte and Miss Theodosia Cockayne had had an explanation in the conservatory, and Mrs. Cockayne had invited “his lordship” to London.

I shall pick up the threads of all this presently.

CHAPTER XI.

MYSTERIOUS TRAVELLERS.

Poor girl! she was timid, frightened.  I saw at once that the man with whom she was, and who packed her feet up so carefully in the travelling rug in her state cabin, was not of her class.  She could not have been daintier in mien and shape than she appeared.  Hands round and white as pearls, feet as pretty as ever stole from a man’s hand to the stirrup; a sweet wee face, that had innocence and heart in it.  Country bred, I thought:  nested in some Kentish village:  a childhood amid the hops:  familiar with buttermilk and home-baked bread.

Who has not been blessed by looking upon such an English face:  ruddy on the cheek, and white and pink upon the brow and neck:  the head poised upon the shoulders with a wondrous delicacy?  Such girls issue from honest Englishmen’s homes to gladden honeymoon cottages, and perpetuate that which is virtuous and courageous in our Saxon race.  She lay muffled in shawls, pillowed upon a carpet-bag, softened with his fur coat, frightened about the sea, and asking every few minutes whether we were near the port.

He fell into conversation with me before we were clear of Folkestone harbour.  He was a travelled man, accustomed to do his journeying socially, and not in the surly, self-contained, and selfish manner of our countrymen generally.  I confess—­and it is a boldness, knowing all I do know now—­that I was drawn towards Daker at the outset.  He had a winning manner—­just that manner which puts you on a friendly footing with a stranger before you have passed an hour in his company.  He began,