“That may be; but you ought to have been more than passive in the matter. Your fears would have prevented you letting your niece stop for a night in an unhealthy locality. You’d not have suffered her to halt in the Pontine Marshes; but you can see no danger in linking her whole future life to influences five thousand times more depressing. I tell you, and I tell you deliberately, that she’d have a far better chance of happiness with a scamp like myself.”
“Ah, I need not tell you my own sentiments on that point,” said she, with a deep sigh.
Calvert apparently set little store by such sympathy, for he rose, and throwing away the end of his cigar, stood looking out over the lake. “Here comes Onofrio, flourishing some letters in his hand. The idiot fancies the post never brings any but pleasant tidings.”
“Let us go down and meet him,” said Miss Grainger; and he walked along at her side in silence.
“Three for the Signor Capitano,” said the boatman, “and one for the signorina,” handing the letters as he landed.
“Drayton,” muttered Calvert; “the others are strange to me.”
“This is from Joseph. How glad poor Florry will be to get it.”
“Don’t defer her happiness, then,” said he, half-sternly; “I’ll sit down on the rocks here and con over my less pleasant correspondence.” One was from his lawyer, to state that outlawry could no longer be resisted, and that if his friends would not come forward at once with some satisfactory promise of arrangement, the law must take its course. “My friends,” said he, with a bitter laugh, “which be they?” The next he opened was from the army agents, dryly setting forth that as he had left the service it was necessary he should take some immediate steps to liquidate some regimental claims against him, of which they begged to enclose the particulars. He laughed bitterly and scornfully as he tore the letter to fragments and threw the pieces into the water. “How well they know the man they threaten!” cried he defiantly. “I’d like to know how much a drowning man cares for his duns?” He laughed again. “Now for Drayton. I hope this will be pleasanter than its predecessors.” It was not very long, and it was as follows:
“Dear Harry,--Your grateful compliments on the dexterity of my correspondence in the Meteor arrived at an unlucky moment, for some fellow had just written to the editor a real statement of the whole affair, and the next day came a protest, part French, part English, signed by Edward Rochefort, Lieutenant-Colonel; Gustavus Brooke, D.L.; George Law, M.D.; Albericde Raymond, Vicomte, and Jules de Lassagnac. They sent for me to the office to see the document, and I threw all imaginable discredit on its authenticity, but without success. The upshot is, _I_ have lost my place as ‘own correspondent,’ and you are in a very bad way. The whole will appear in print to-morrow, and be read from Hudson’s Bay to the alaya. I have done my best to get the other papers to disparage the statement, and have written all the usual bosh about condemning a man in his absence, and entreating the public to withhold its judgment, &c. &c; but they all seem to feel that the tide of popular sentiment is too strong to resist, and you must be pilloried; prepare yourself, then, for a pitiless pelting, which, as parliament is not sitting, will probably have a run of three or four weeks.