"People, I believe, never go to bed in Italy," said he, yawning; "or only in the day-time. So that we are in training already, Julia."
"How I hope the match may come off," said she, as she gave him her hand at parting. "I 'll go and dream over it."
CHAPTER XXII. IN THE LIBRARY AT CASTELLO.
When L'Estrange and his sister arrived at Castello, on the morning after the scene of our last chapter, it was to discover that the family had gone off early to visit the mine of Lisconnor, where they were to dine, and not return till late in the evening.
Colonel Bramleigh alone remained behind. A number of important letters which had come by that morning's post detained him; but he had pledged himself to follow the party, and join them at dinner, if he could finish his correspondence in time.
George and Julia turned away from the door, and were slowly retracing their road homeward, when a servant came running after them to say that Colonel Bramleigh begged Mr. L'Estrange would come back for a moment; that he had something of consequence to say to him.
"I'll stroll about the shrubberies, George, till you join me," said Julia. "Who knows it may not be a farewell look I may be taking of these dear old scenes."
George nodded, half mournfully, and followed the servant towards the library.
In his ordinary and every-day look, no man ever seemed a more perfect representative of worldly success and prosperity than Colonel Bramleigh. He was personally what would be called handsome, had a high bold forehead, and large gray eyes, well set and shaded by strong full eyebrows, so regular in outline and so correctly defined as to give a half-suspicion that art had been called to the assistance of nature. He was ruddy and fresh-looking, with an erect carriage, and that air of general confidence that seemed to declare he knew himself to be a favorite of fortune, and gloried in the distinction.
"I can do scores of things others must not venture upon," was a common saying of his. "I can trust to my luck," was almost a maxim with him. And in reality, if the boast was somewhat vainglorious, it was not without foundation; a marvellous, almost unerring, success attended him through life. Enterprises that were menaced with ruin and bankruptcy would rally from the hour that he joined them, and schemes of fortune that men deemed half desperate would, under his guidance, grow into safe and profitable speculations. Others might equal him in intelligence, in skill, in ready resource and sudden expedient; but he had not one to rival him in luck. It is strange enough that the hard business mind, the men of realism _par excellence_, can recognize such a thing as fortune; but so it is, there are none so prone to believe in this quality as the people of finance. The spirit of the gambler is, in fact, the spirit of commercial enterprise, and the "odds" are as carefully calculated in the counting-house as in the betting-ring. Seen as he came into the breakfast room of a morning, with the fresh flush of exercise on his cheek, or as he appeared in the drawing-room, before dinner, with that air of ease and enjoyment that marked all his courtesy, one would have said, "There is one certainly with whom the world goes well." There were caustic, invidious people, who hinted that Bramleigh deserved but little credit for that happy equanimity and that buoyant spirit which sustained him. They said, "He has never had a reverse; wait till he be tried." And the world had waited and waited, and to all seeming the eventful hour had not come; for there he was, a little balder, perhaps, a stray gray hair in his whiskers, and somewhat portlier in his presence, but, on the whole, pretty much what men had known him to be for fifteen or twenty years back.