“And then she did refuse him,” said I, with ill-repressed exultation.

“Of that there can be no doubt; for independently of all the gossip and quizzing upon the subject, to which Guy was exposed in the coteries, he made little secret of it himself—­openly avowing that he did not consider a repulse a defeat, and that he resolved to sustain the siege as vigorously as ever.”

However interested I felt in all Trevanion was telling me, I could not help falling into a train of thinking on my first acquaintance with the Callonbys.  There are, perhaps, but few things more humiliating than the knowledge that any attention or consideration we have met with, has been paid us in mistake for another; and in the very proportion that they were prized before, are they detested when the truth is known to us.

To all the depressing influences these thoughts suggested, came the healing balm that Lady Jane was true to me—­that she, at least, however others might be biassed by worldly considerations—­that she cared for me —­for myself alone.  My reader (alas! for my character for judgment) knows upon how little I founded the conviction; but I have often, in these Confessions, avowed my failing, par excellence, to be a great taste for self-deception; and here was a capital occasion for its indulgence.

“We shall have abundant time to discuss this later on,” said Trevanion, laying his hand upon my shoulder to rouse my wandering attention—­“for now, I perceive, we have only eight minutes to spare.”

As he spoke, a dragoon officer, in an undress, rode up to the window of the carriage, and looking steadily at our party for a few seconds, asked if we were “Messieurs les Anglais;” and, almost without waiting for reply, added, “You had better not go any farther in your carriage, for the next turn of the road will bring you in sight of the village.”

We accordingly stopped the driver, and having (with) some difficulty aroused O’Leary, got out upon the road.  The militaire here gave his horse to a groom, and proceeded to guide us through a corn-field by a narrow path, with whose windings and crossings he appeared quite conversant.  We at length reached the brow of a little hill, from which an extended view of the country lay before us, showing the Seine winding its tranquil course between the richly tilled fields, dotted with many a pretty cottage.  Turning abruptly from this point, our guide led us, by a narrow and steep path, into a little glen, planted with poplar and willows.  A small stream ran through this, and by the noise we soon detected that a mill was not far distant, which another turning brought us at once in front of.