"Yes. My letters from Virginia and Alice are very importunate; and I shall either sell, or go upon half-pay. I leave Flanders on sick leave, in the first instance."
"Well, I shall soon rejoin you in Perthshire. I have seen enough blood shed and battles won, and long to see the old peak of Benmore, and hear the leaves rustling pleasantly in the woods of Oich and Lochisla again."
Next day Lisle took his departure from Brussels. He still singularly left Ronald in ignorance of what had occurred at home. A thousand times he was on the point of adverting to the subject, but always refrained. In a letter to Alice, he said that he would leave to _her_ "the disagreeable task of conveying to Stuart the information of his father’s ruin, and the emigration of the Lochisla men; because," continued the letter, "so great is Ronald’s veneration for his parent, and such his Highland pride and his love of the old ancestral tower, with all its feudal and family associations, that I verily believe he would shoot himself in the first gust of his passion, were I to acquaint him with what has happened at Lochisla."
Scarcely had Lisle left Brussels, when Ronald found that his thoughts were beginning to revert to Antoinette de la Misericorde; and longing to see her again, he determined to sally forth the next day and take an airing, in the hope of meeting her in the streets. There were many hobbling about in the sunshine, on the Boulevard de l’Este and the Boulevard du Nord, who had been more severely wounded than himself.
On the morrow, therefore, immediately after discussing his breakfast,—chocolate and a cigar,—he went forth into the streets of Brussels for the first time since he passed through them in a waggon. The noise, whirl, and din of the passengers and vehicles of every kind, caused such a spinning sensation in his head, that he nearly fell to the ground. He moved along the crowded streets, scarcely knowing whether his head or heels were uppermost. The glare of the noon-day sun seemed hot and strange, and every thing—the houses, the lamp-posts, the church spires, seemed waving and in motion. With the aid of a patriarchal staff, which erst belonged to Mynheer Vandergroot, he made his way through Brussels, and reached the long shady walk of the Boulevard de l’Este, where, in thankfulness, he seated himself for some minutes on a stone sofa.