and the next moment I had blotted myself behind the teapot.  The popular traveller had turned to wave a farewell; and behold! he was no other than my cousin Alain.  It was a change of the sharpest from the angry, pallid man I had seen at Amersham Place.  Ruddy to a fault, illuminated with vintages, crowned with his curls like Bacchus, he now stood before me for an instant, the perfect master of himself, smiling with airs of conscious popularity and insufferable condescension.  He reminded me at once of a royal duke, or an actor turned a little elderly, and of a blatant bagman who should have been the illegitimate son of a gentleman.  A moment after he was gliding noiselessly on the road to London.

I breathed again.  I recognised, with heartfelt gratitude, how lucky I had been to go in by the stable-yard instead of the hostelry door, and what a fine occasion of meeting my cousin I had lost by the purchase of the claret-coloured chaise!  The next moment I remembered that there was a waiter present.  No doubt but he must have observed me when I crouched behind the breakfast equipage; no doubt but he must have commented on this unusual and undignified behaviour; and it was essential that I should do something to remove the impression.

‘Waiter!’ said I, ’that was the nephew of Count Carwell that just drove off, wasn’t it?’

‘Yes, sir:  Viscount Carwell we calls him,’ he replied.

‘Ah, I thought as much,’ said I.  ’Well, well, damn all these Frenchmen, say I!’

‘You may say so indeed, sir,’ said the waiter.  ’They ain’t not to say in the same field with our ‘ome-raised gentry.’

‘Nasty tempers?’ I suggested.

’Beas’ly temper, sir, the Viscount ‘ave,’ said the waiter with feeling.  ’Why, no longer agone than this morning, he was sitting breakfasting and reading in his paper.  I suppose, sir, he come on some pilitical information, or it might be about ’orses, but he raps his ’and upon the table sudden and calls for curacoa.  It gave me quite a turn, it did; he did it that sudden and ’ard.  Now, sir, that may be manners in France, but hall I can say is, that I’m not used to it.’

‘Reading the paper, was he?’ said I.  ‘What paper, eh?’

‘Here it is, sir,’ exclaimed the waiter.  ’Seems like as if he’d dropped it.’

And picking it off the floor he presented it to me.

I may say that I was quite prepared, that I already knew what to expect; but at sight of the cold print my heart stopped beating.  There it was:  the fulfilment of Romaine’s apprehension was before me; the paper was laid open at the capture of Clausel.  I felt as if I could take a little curacoa myself, but on second thoughts called for brandy.  It was badly wanted; and suddenly I observed the waiter’s eye to sparkle, as it were, with some recognition; made certain he had remarked the resemblance between me and Alain; and became aware—­as by a revelation—­of the fool’s part