Curious to see the paragraph which had such interest for him, I took up his paper, and my eye fell at once upon the following paragraph:--
"THE NEW PEERAGE.--Our readers will be glad to perceive that, by last night's _London Gazette_, a right honourable lord, long known in the world of fashion, and latterly in political circles, has been raised to a marquisate, by the title of Marquis of Slubber de Gullion and Viscount Gabey of Slubberleigh. Rumour adds that, lest the newly-won honours perish, the noble marquis is about to lead to the altar the only daughter and heiress of one of the greatest of our English families--the fair maid of Kent."
I knew well that the closing words could only refer to Louisa Loftus. I had seen her but a few days before this piece of impertinent twaddle had been penned, and the memory of our parting hour, and the expression of her eyes, came vividly before me; but we were far separated now, and it is difficult to describe how deeply the tenor of that paragraph stung me.
The drums were beating in barrack and citadel, and the trumpets were sounding tattoo in the transports, as we were rowed back to our vessel. Studhome and the colonel were chatting gaily, and Scarlett was humming a waltz, as he pulled the stroke-oar and thought of past days at Oxford.
From violet and purple, the tints of the later evening--the gloaming, as we call it in Scotland--passed into blue and amber, and the lights of Valetta rose over each other, glittering in tiers along the slope on which the city is built, with all its "streets of stairs," which Byron anathematized.
The band of an infantry regiment was playing in Citta Nuova, and softly the strains of the music came across the rippling water, over which the blue and amber tints were swiftly spreading, while in its depths the stars were shining, and all the shipping were reflected downwards.
Lights glittered gaily all round the harbour; the ramparts of St. Elmo and of Ricazoli, with the mass of the cathedral, where the knights of the Seven Nations sleep in their marble tombs, and where hung of old the silver keys of Acre, Rhodes, and Jerusalem, stood in bold outline against the ruddy, but deepening, twilight sky.
The scene was lovely and stirring withal; but my heart and thoughts were far away from Malta, as we were rowed back between crowded transports, and huge, silent frigates and line-of battle ships, to the _Pride of the Ocean_.