Colonel Halkett mentioned a report that Nevil had received a slight thigh-wound of small importance.  At any rate, something was the matter with him, and it was naturally imagined that he would have double cause to write home; and still more so for the reason, his uncle confessed, that he had foreseen the folly of a war conducted by milky cotton-spinners and their adjuncts, in partnership with a throned gambler, who had won his stake, and now snapped his fingers at them.  Everard expected, he had prepared himself for, the young naval politician’s crow, and he meant to admit frankly that he had been wrong in wishing to fight anybody without having first crushed the cotton faction.  But Nevil continued silent.

‘Dead in hospital or a Turk hotel!’ sighed Everard; ’and no more to the scoundrels over there than a body to be shovelled into slack lime.’

Rosamund Culling was the only witness of his remarkable betrayal of grief.

CHAPTER V

RENEE

At last, one morning, arrived a letter from a French gentleman signing himself Comte Cresnes de Croisnel, in which Everard was informed that his nephew had accompanied the son of the writer, Captain de Croisnel, on board an Austrian boat out of the East, and was lying in Venice under a return-attack of fever,—­not, the count stated pointedly, in the hands of an Italian physician.  He had brought his own with him to meet his son, who was likewise disabled.

Everard was assured by M. de Croisnel that every attention and affectionate care were being rendered to his gallant and adored nephew—­’vrai type de tout ce qu’il y a de noble et de chevaleresque dans la vieille Angleterre’—­from a family bound to him by the tenderest obligations, personal and national; one as dear to every member of it as the brother, the son, they welcomed with thankful hearts to the Divine interposition restoring him to them.  In conclusion, the count proposed something like the embrace of a fraternal friendship should Everard think fit to act upon the spontaneous sentiments of a loving relative, and join them in Venice to watch over his nephew’s recovery.  Already M. Nevil was stronger.  The gondola was a medicine in itself, the count said.

Everard knitted his mouth to intensify a peculiar subdued form of laughter through the nose, in hopeless ridicule of a Frenchman’s notions of an Englishman’s occupations—­presumed across Channel to allow of his breaking loose from shooting engagements at a minute’s notice, to rush off to a fetid foreign city notorious for mud and mosquitoes, and commence capering and grimacing, pouring forth a jugful of ready-made extravagances, with ‘mon fils! mon cher neveu!  Dieu!’ and similar fiddlededee.  These were matters for women to do, if they chose:  women and Frenchmen were much of a pattern.  Moreover, he knew the hotel this Comte de Croisnel was staying at.  He gasped at the name of it:  he had rather encounter a grisly bear than a mosquito any night of his life, for no stretch of cunning outwits a mosquito; and enlarging on the qualities of the terrific insect, he vowed it was damnation without trial or judgement.