Livia turned to a French gentleman of her court, M. de St. Ombre, and pursued a conversation.  He was a stately cavalier of the Gallicized Frankish outlines, ready, but grave in his bearing, grave in his delivery, trimly moustached, with a Guise beard.

His profound internal question relating to this un-English beauty of the British Isles:—­had she no passion in her nature? was not convinced by her apparent insensibility to Fortune’s whips.

Sir Meeson Corby inserted a word of Bull French out of place from time to time.

As it might be necessary to lean on the little man for weapons of war, supposing Lord Fleetwood delayed his arrival yet another day, Livia was indulgent.  She assisted him to think that he spoke the foreign tongue.

Mention of Lord Fleetwood set Sir Meeson harping again on his alarms, in consideration of the vagabond object of the young lord had roamed away with.

‘You forget that Russett has gypsy in him:  Welsh! it’s about the same,’ said Livia.  ‘He can take excellent care of himself and his purse.’

‘Countess, he is a good six days overdue.’

‘He will be in time for the ball at the Schloss.’

Sir Meeson Corby produced an aspect of the word ‘if,’ so perkily, that the dejected Captain Abrane laughed outright and gave him double reason to fret for Lord Fleetwood’s arrival, by saying:  ’If he hangs off much longer, I shall have to come on you for another fifty.’

Our two pedestrians out of Salzburg were standing up in the night of cloud and pines above the glittering pool, having made their way along the path from the hill anciently dedicated to the god Mercury; and at the moment when Sir Meeson put forth his frilled wrists to say:  ’If you had seen his hands—­the creature Fleetwood trotted off alone with!—­you’d be a bit anxious too’; the young lord called his comrade to gaze underneath them:  ’There they are, hard at it, at their play!—­it’s the word used for the filthiest gutter scramble.’

They had come to know something of one another’s humours; which are taken by young men for their characters; and should the humours please, they are friends, until further humours develop, trying these nascent conservatives hard to suit them to their moods as well as the accustomed.  Lord Fleetwood had discovered in his companion, besides the spirit of independence and the powers of thought impressed on him by Woodseer’s precocious flashes, a broad playfulness, that trenched on buffoonery; it astonished, amused, and relieved him, loosening the spell of reverence cast over him by one who could so wonderfully illumine his brain.  Prone to admire and bend the knee where he admired, he chafed at subjection, unless he had the particular spell constantly renewed.  A tone in him once or twice of late, different from the comrade’s, had warned Woodseer to be guarded.

Susceptible, however, of the extreme contrast between the gamblers below and Nature’s lover beside him, Fleetwood returned to his enthusiasm without thinking it a bondage.