<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[230]</SPAN></span></p>
<p class="pc elarge">PART III</p>
<div class="figcenter"> <ANTIMG src="images/b1.jpg" width-obs="100" height-obs="25" alt="" title="" /></div>
<h2 class="p2">CHAPTER I</h2>
<p class="pch1"><span class="smcap">Memoir of Captain Basil Jennico</span> (<span class="smcap">RESUMED IN THE
SPRING OF THE YEAR 1773</span>)</p>
<p class="pr2 reduct"><span class="smcap">In my Castle of Tollendhal</span>, <i>March, 1773</i>.</p>
<p><span class="smcap">It</span> is the will of one whose wishes are law to
me that I should proceed with these pages, begun
under such stress of mental trouble, until I bring
the tangled story of Basil Jennico’s marriage to its
singular settlement.</p>
<p>Without, as I now write, all over the land, the
ice-bound brooks are melting, and our fields and
roads are deep in impassable mud. The whole
air is full of the breath of spring, as grateful to the
nostrils as it is stirring to the blood of man, to the
sap of trees.</p>
<p>But it is ill getting about, for all that the springtime
is so sweet—as sweet and as capricious as a
woman wooed—and thus there is time for this occupation<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[231]</SPAN></span>
of scribe; yet it is a curious task for one
bred to so vastly different a trade; neither, God
knows, do I find time heavy on my hands just
now! Nevertheless, I must even end this preface
as I have begun it, and say that I am fain to do as
I am bidden.</p>
<p>The last line I traced upon these sheets (I am
filled with a good deal of wonder at, and no little
admiration of myself, when I view what a goodly
mass I have already blackened) was penned at one
of the darkest moments of that dark year.</p>
<p>M. de Schreckendorf—little messenger of such
ill omen—had but just departed, and in the month
that followed his visit the courage had failed me
to resume my melancholy record, though truly I
had things to relate that a man might consider like
to form a more than usually thrilling chapter of
autobiography.</p>
<p>Towards the beginning of September, I, still a
dweller upon my mother’s little property—most
peaceful haunt, it would seem, in the heart of our
peaceful land—began to find myself the object of
a series of murderous attacks—these, so repeated
and inveterate, that it was evident that they were
dictated by the most deliberate purpose, and the
more alarming, perhaps, that I could give then no
guess from what quarter they proceeded.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[232]</SPAN></span></p>
<p>Suspicion fell on a poaching gang, on a dishonest
groom, on a discharged bailiff. At length,
seeing my mother like to fall ill of the anxiety, I
consented to return to London, although the country
life and the wholesome excitement of sport had
afforded me a relief from my restlessness which
existence in the town was far from providing.</p>
<p>No sooner, however, was I fully installed in
my London chambers, than the persecution began
afresh. I had fallen into an idle habit of going
night after night to White’s, there to bet and gamble
with my modish acquaintances. ’Twas not that
the dice had any special attraction for me, but that
my nights were so long.</p>
<p>On my way thither one mid-October foggy evening,
my life was once more attempted, and this
time with a deliberation and ferocity which might
well have proved successful at last.</p>
<p>As it was, however, I again providentially escaped,
and was able to proceed to the club, where
I had an appointment with a poor youth—our
Norfolk neighbour, Sir John Beddoes—who had
already lost a great deal of money to me, and
would not be content until he had lost a great deal
more: I had the most insupportable good luck.</p>
<p>I little knew that I should find awaiting me
there the greatest danger I had yet to run;<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[233]</SPAN></span>
that the head which had directed all these blows
in the dark was, de guerre lasse, preparing to
attack me in the open, and push its malice
to a certain climax. A foreign gentleman—one
Chevalier de Ville-Rouge, as I knew him then—had
sedulously sought first my acquaintance, and
thereupon my company, for some weeks past.
And though I had not found him very entertaining—I
was not in the mood to be entertained
by any one—I had no reason to deny him either
the one or the other.</p>
<p>But this night, after first addressing me with
looks and tones which began to strike me as unwarrantable,
he sat a round of hazard with me,
for the sole and determined purpose, as I even
then saw, of grossly insulting me. As a reply, I
struck him across the face, for, however transparent
was the trap laid for me, the provocation before
witnesses was of a kind I could not pass over.
And, ’fore Heaven, I believe I was in my heart
glad of the diversion!</p>
<p>The meeting was fixed for the next morning.
Neither of us would consent to delay, and indeed
the German’s whole demeanour, once he had given
a loose rein to his fury, was more that of a wild
beast thirsting for blood than of a being endowed
with reason.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[234]</SPAN></span></p>
<p>Both Sir John Beddoes and Mr. Carew, who had
formed our party, indignant at the coarseness of
the foreigner’s behaviour, volunteered on the spot
to be my seconds, and Carew, who has a subtle
knowledge of the etiquette of honour, arranged the
details of our meeting. It was to take place in
Chelsea Gardens half an hour after sunrise. The
weapons chosen by M. de Ville-Rouge were swords,
for although the quarrel had been of his own seeking,
my blow had given him the right of choice.</p>
<p>It was two o’clock before I found myself again
alone in my rooms that night, my friends having
conducted me home, and seeming somewhat loath
to retire. I was longing for a couple of hours’
solitude before the dawn of the day which might
be my last. I felt that my career had reached its
turning-point, that this was an event otherwise
serious than any of the quarrels in which I had
been hitherto embroiled, and that the conduct of
affairs was not in my hands.</p>
<p>Carew was anxious about me—he had never
yet seen a duellist of my kidney, I believe—and
my very quietness puzzled him.</p>
<p>“Make that nutcracker attendant of yours prepare
you a hot drink, man,” cried he, as at last,
with honest Beddoes, he withdrew, “and get to bed.
Nothing will steady your hand like a spell of sleep.”</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[235]</SPAN></span></p>
<p>But there was no sleep for me. Besides that
the pain of the slight wound which I had received
in the night’s guet-apens was stiffening to great
soreness, there was an excitement in my brain—partially
due to the fever incident on the hurt—which
would not permit the thought of rest.</p>
<p>I had but little business to transact. In view
of the present uncertainty of my life, I had recently
drawn up a will in which, after certain fitting
legacies, I left my great fortune to my wife. Now
I merely gathered together the whole of this accumulated
narrative of mine into a weighty packet,
and after addressing it, deposited it in János’s hands
with the strict injunction, in the event of my demise,
to deliver it personally to Ottilie.</p>
<p>No farewell message would be so eloquent as
these pages in which I had laid bare the innermost
thoughts of my soul since I first knew her. She
should receive no other message from me. I next
tore up poor Beddoes’s litter of I O U’s, and making
a parcel of the fragments directed it to him.
János received my instructions with his usual taciturn
docility, yet if anything could have roused me
from the curious state of apathy in which I found
myself, it would have been the sight of the dumb
concern on the faithful fellow’s countenance.</p>
<p>Having thus put all my worldly affairs in order,<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[236]</SPAN></span>
I sat me down in my armchair, awaiting the dawn,
and viewed the past as one who has done with
life. I had a strong presentiment upon me that
I should not survive the meeting.</p>
<p>At times, the vision of my wife sleeping, at that
very moment, as I had so often watched her sleep,
lightly and easily as a child, little wotting, little
caring, perhaps, if she had wotted, of her husband’s
solemn vigil, would rise up before me with
a vividness so cruel as well-nigh to rouse me. But
the new calmness of my soul defied these assaults;
an unknown philosophy had succeeded to the violence
of my emotions.</p>
<p>When my seconds called for me in the first greyness
of the morning they found me ready for them.
They themselves were shivering from the raw cold,
with arms thrust to the elbows into the depths of
their muffs; Carew, all yellow and shrivelled,—an
old man of a sudden,—and Beddoes, blue and
purple, the sleep still in his swollen eyes, hardly
able to keep his teeth from chattering—a very
schoolboy! They could scarce conceal their
amazement at my placidity. It was not, indeed,
that I found myself bodily fit for the contest, for
the whole of my left side was stiff, and I could
hardly move that arm without pain; yet placid I
was, I scarcely now know why.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[237]</SPAN></span></p>
<p>Thus we set forth in Sir John Beddoes’s coach,
János on the box, and a civil, shy young man on
the back seat beside Beddoes: this was, the latter
informed me, the best surgeon he had been able
to secure at such short notice.</p>
<p>The fog disappeared, and when the mists evaporated
it promised to be a fine, bright, frosty
morning.</p>
<p>Now, it may be after all that I was a little light-headed
with the heat of the wound in my blood,
for I have no very clear recollections of that morning.
It remains in my mind rather as a bright-coloured
fantasy than a series of events I have
actually lived through.</p>
<p>I remember, as a man may remember a scene in
a play, a garden running down to the river-side,
very bare and desolate, and the figure and face
of my bulky antagonist as he conferred excitedly
with two outlandish-looking men, his seconds.
These had fierce moustaches, and reminded me
vaguely of the cravat captains I had known in
the Empire. Then the scene shifts: we stand
facing each other. I am glad of the chill of the
air, with nothing between it and my fevered breast
but the thinness of my shirt. But my opponent
stamps like a menacing bull, as if furious at the
benumbing blasts. Now I am fighting—fighting<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[238]</SPAN></span>
for my life—as never in battle or in single combat
have I had need to fight before. This is
no courteous duel between gentlemen, no honourable
meeting, but the struggle of a man with
his murderer. Physically at a disadvantage from
my hurt, I am moreover conscious that against
this brute fury all my skill at arms is of no
avail and my strength is rapidly failing. Then,
as he drives me by the sheer weight of his mass,
I see his face thrust forward into mine, distorted
with such a frenzy that I wonder in a sort of
unformed way why this man should thus thirst
to kill me. The next moment, with an extraordinary
sense of universal failure and disorganisation
which is yet not pain, I realise that I am hit—badly
hit.</p>
<p>Upon that instant I find my brain cleared to
a lucidity I have never felt before. I see my
opponent’s sword flash ruby red with my own
blood in the sun rays; I see him smile, a smile
of glorious triumph, which cuts a deep dimple
beside his lip; I hear him pant at me the strange
words, “Ha! Ottilie!” and then I am again
seared, rent once more, and to the sound of a
howl of many voices my world falls into chaos
and exists no more.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[239]</SPAN></span></p>
<table id="ttb1" summary="tb1">
<tr>
<td class="tdc">*</td>
<td class="tdc">*</td>
<td class="tdc">*</td>
<td class="tdc">*</td>
<td class="tdc">*</td>
<td class="tdc">*</td>
</tr>
</table>
<p>It is sometimes but a short and easy way up to
the gates of death, but a long and weary journey
back to life. It was a long and weary journey to me.</p>
<p>I was like to a man who travels in the dead of
night over rough ways, and now and again slumbers
uneasily with troubled dreams, and now looks
out upon a glimmer of light in some house or
village, and now on nothing but the pitchy darkness;
and yet he is always travelling on and on
till he is weary with madness of fatigue. And
then, as the dawn breaks upon the wanderer, and
he sees a strange land around him, so the dawn
of what seemed a new existence began to break
for me, and I looked upon life anew with wondering
eyes.</p>
<p>At first I looked as the traveller may, with eyes
so tired and drowsy as scarce to care to notice.
But in yet a little while I warmed and quickened
to the sun of returning health. I began to be
something more than a mere tortured mass of
humanity; each breath was no longer misery to
draw; the mind was able to re-assert authority
over the flesh. That dark, watchful figure that
seemed to have been sitting at the foot of my
bed for centuries, that was János! Poor old fellow!
I could not yet speak to him, but I could
smile. My next thought was amaze that I should<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[240]</SPAN></span>
be in a strange room; it had a very teasing tapestry;
its figures had worried me long before I
could notice them. In a little while I began to
understand that I was not in my own chambers,
and to feel such irritation at the liberty which had
been taken with me that I should have demanded
instant explanation had my strength been equal to
the task.</p>
<p>But I come of too vigorous stock, the blood
that runs in my veins is too sweet—because I
have not, like so many young fools of my day,
poisoned it with endless potations and dissoluteness—for
me, when once on the broad high road
to recovery (to continue my travelling simile), to
dally over the ground.</p>
<p>Moreover I was too well nursed. János, it
seems, after the first couple of visits, in each of
which I was wisely bled of the diminished store
the Chevalier’s sword had left in my veins—János
had had a great quarrel with the surgeon,
vowing he would not see his master’s murder
completed before his eyes and never a chance of
hanging the murderer.</p>
<p>It had ended in the old soldier taking the law
into his own hands, dismissing the man of medicine,
and treating me after his own lights. He
had had a fairly good apprenticeship, having<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[241]</SPAN></span>
attended my uncle through all his campaigns.
As far as I am concerned I am convinced that
in this, as well as in another matter which I
am about to relate, he saved my life.</p>
<p>The other matter has reference to the very
change of quarters which had excited my ire, the
true explanation of which, however, I did not receive
until I was strong enough to entertain visitors.
János would give me little or no satisfaction.</p>
<p>“I thought in myself it would be more wholesome
for your honour than your other house,” was
the utmost I could extract. Indeed, he strenuously
discouraged all conversation. But the day when
this stern guardian first consented to admit Carew
and Beddoes to my presence,—and that was not
till I could sit up in bed and converse freely,—all
that I had been curious about was made clear to
me.</p>
<p>Carew, indeed, had the virtue of being an excellent
gossip. I had at one time deemed it his
only quality, but I learned better then. Both the
gentlemen, each in his own fashion, displayed a
certain emotion at seeing me again, in which
pleasure at the fact of my being still in the land
of the living, and likely to remain so, was qualified
by the painful impression produced by my altered
appearance.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[242]</SPAN></span></p>
<p>Sir John, the boy, sat himself down on the edge
of my bed and squeezed my hand in silence, with
something like tears in his eyes. Carew, the roué,
was very deliberate in his choice of a chair, took
snuff with a vast deal of elegant gesture, and
fired off, with it might be an excess of merriment,
such jocularities as he had gathered ready against
the occasion. Both of them seemed to deem it
incumbent upon them to avoid any reference to the
duel. I, however, very promptly brought up the
subject.</p>
<p>“Now, for God’s sake,” I said, “let a poor man
who has been kept like a child with a cross nurse—take
your pap, go to sleep, ask no questions—learn
at last a little about himself. In the first
place, where am I? In the second, what has become
of the red devil who brought me to this
pass?”</p>
<p>“In the first place, Jennico,” said Carew, “you
are at the house of Lady Beddoes, mother to
our friend here, a very pleasing little residence
situate on Richmond Hill. Secondly, that red
devil, as you call him, that most damnable villain,
has fled the country, as well he might, for if ever
a knave deserved stringing up as high as Haman—but
of that anon. There is a good deal to
tell you if you think you can bear the excitement.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[243]</SPAN></span></p>
<p>“Well,” he pursued, upon my somewhat pettish
asseveration, “I myself think a little pleasant conversation
will do you more good than harm. To
begin with, you are doubtless not aware that you
are a dead man.”</p>
<p>“How?” cried I, a little startled, for my nerve
was yet none of the strongest.</p>
<p>“Nay, nay, dash you, Carew,” interposed Sir
John, “don’t ye make those jokes. Gruesome,
I call ’em: it makes me creep! No, Basil, lad,
thou art alive, and wilt live to set that Chevalier,
whoever he may be, swinging for it yet.” And
here in his eager partisanship he broke into a
volley of execrations which would have run my
poor great-uncle’s performances pretty close.</p>
<p>“Why,” said I impatiently, “‘tis enigma to me
still why I am here; why I am dead; why the
Chevalier should hang. I think you have all
sworn to drive me mad among you.”</p>
<p>I was so evidently exasperated that Beddoes,
all of a tremble, besought Carew to explain the
situation.</p>
<p>“He’ll do himself a mischief,” he cried pathetically;
“do you tell him, Carew,—you know what
a fool I am!”</p>
<p>Carew was nothing loath to set about what was
indeed the chief pleasure of his life, the retailing of<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[244]</SPAN></span>
scandal; and it seems that the Jennico duel was
a very pretty scandal indeed.</p>
<p>“I will take your last question first,” said he,
settling himself to his task with gusto. “Why the
Chevalier should hang? Who he really is, where
he comes from, why he hates you with such deadly
hatred, Jennico, are all mysteries which I confess
myself unable to fathom—doubtless you can furnish
us with the clue by-and-by.”</p>
<p>As he spoke his pale eye kindled with a most
devouring curiosity. Nevertheless as I showed no
desire to interrupt him by any little confidence, he
proceeded glibly:</p>
<p>“But why the Chevalier should hang is another
matter. Gadzooks, I’d run him down myself were
it but for his impudence in getting gentlemen like
myself to come and see foul play. Why, Jennico,
man, don’t you know that after charging you like
a bull, and running you once through the body, the
scoundrel stabbed you again as you were sinking
down and the sword had dropped from your hand.
I doubt me he would have spitted you a third time
to make quite sure, had not Beddoes and I fallen
upon him.”</p>
<p>“I’d have run him through,” here interposed
Sir John excitedly; “I had drawn for it, had I not,
Dick?—and I’d have run him through, but that<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[245]</SPAN></span>
the surgeon called out that you were dead; and
dash me, between the turn I got and the way
those queer seconds of his hustled him away, I lost
the chance! And the three of them ran, they ran
like rats, to the river. Gad, I’d have left my mark
on them even then, but Carew, be hanged to him,
held on by my coat-tails.”</p>
<p>“‘Tis just as Jack told you,” said Carew. “No
sooner had they heard you were dead, my friend,
than they ran for it, and it is quite true that I
restrained Jack here from sticking them in the
back as they skedaddled. A pretty affair of
honour, indeed!”</p>
<p>I lay back on my pillows awhile, musing. I
had had time to reflect on many things these
days, and—God knows—there were enigmas
enough in my life to give me food for reflection.
What I had just heard caused me no surprise,
tallying as it did with conclusions I had previously
reached.</p>
<p>After a moment Carew cleared his throat, edged
his chair a foot nearer, and queried confidentially:
“Did it never strike you that the Chevalier must
have been part and parcel, if not the moving spirit,
of those attacks upon your life which you told us
of that night at the club? You did not appear to
have a notion of it then. Yet there was not a man<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[246]</SPAN></span>
of us there who did not see but the quarrel was
deliberately got up.”</p>
<p>“And d’ye mind,” cried Sir John, “how he bet
me you would not live a month?”</p>
<p>“Ay,” said Carew, “and Jennico knows best
himself if in his gay youth, in foreign parts, he
has not given good cause for this mortal enmity,
though to be sure the mystery thickens when we
remember how friendly you were with each other.
Jennico is such a close dog; he keeps such a
dashed tight counsel!”</p>
<p>I smiled. Jennico would keep his counsel still.
I meant these good fellows should expound my
riddles for me, not I theirs.</p>
<p>“But since I am dead,” said I, “I fear, Jack,
thou hast lost on me again.”</p>
<p>“The gentleman did not leave his address,” said
Sir John with a grin; and he furtively squeezed
my hand to express his secret sense of the little
transaction of the I O U’s.</p>
<p>“We made some clamour at the Embassy, I
promise you,” interposed Carew; “we were anxious
to pay him all his due, you may be sure.
But devil a bit of satisfaction could we get, save
indeed that the Ambassador took to his bed with
a fit of gout, and you being dead, Jennico,—you
are dead still, remember,—to bury you was the<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[247]</SPAN></span>
best thing your friends could do for you, till you
were able to take fit measures to protect yourself.
And indeed it was that queer old Tartar of yours,
your János, or whatever you call him, who loudly
insisted upon your demise, when we found the first
alarm was unfounded and that you still breathed.
Gad, I believe you have as many lives as a cat!
This fellow then says to us in his queer jargon:
’My master lives, but he must all the same be
thought dead.’ And faith he besought us with
such urgency, that, what with seeing you lying
there, and knowing what we knew of the foul
play that had been practised upon you, we were
ready enough to fall in with his desires. Sir John
bethought him of his mother’s house at Richmond,
and offered to accompany you there,—or rather
your body: you were little less just then. Next
the surgeon swore the journey would kill you, and
your servant swore you should not be harboured
in the town. The fellow knew you: ’Good breed,’
he said, ’not easily killed!’ And so he won the
day, and Miles the surgeon gave in; but indeed he
told me apart, ’twas waste of time disputing, for
anyhow you could not see the noon. But here
you are at my Lady Beddoes’s house at Richmond,
alive and like to live, though you have ceased to
exist for most men. There was a charming, really<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[248]</SPAN></span>
a most touching, obituary notice in the Gazettes;
you have been duly lamented at the clubs—and
forgotten within the usual nine days. Rumours
will soon begin to get about of course, but nobody
knows anything positive. The secret is still kept.
János, I believe, has contrived to assuage the anxiety
of your relatives.”</p>
<p>Here the speaker took so copious a pinch to
refresh himself after his long speech that he set
me off sneezing, whereupon my special Cerberus
promptly made his appearance and bundled the
visitors forth without more ado.</p>
<table id="ttb2" summary="tb2">
<tr>
<td class="tdc">*</td>
<td class="tdc">*</td>
<td class="tdc">*</td>
<td class="tdc">*</td>
<td class="tdc">*</td>
<td class="tdc">*</td>
</tr>
</table>
<p>I have said that my friend’s belief in the Chevalier’s
implication in the divers murderous onsets
that had been made upon me, previous to his own,
did not surprise me. The memory of M. de Ville-Rouge’s
cry, as he dealt me what he believed my
death stroke,—a cry in which it would be hard
to say whether savage triumph or sheer vindictiveness
most predominated,—had come back on me,
as soon as I could think at all, with most revealing
force.</p>
<p>His arrival in England had coincided with the
beginning of the persecution. The look on his
face as I had last seen it, that smile and that
dimple, had haunted me during long hours of delirium<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[249]</SPAN></span>
with a most maddening, grotesque, and horrible
likeness to the face of her I had so loved.
Coupling these things in later sanity of mind with
the other evidence, I could not doubt but that here
had been some relative of Ottilie, who had interest
to put an end to her husband’s existence. Had
not her pock-marked Mercury at the close of our
interview uttered words of earnest warning? ay,
I minded them now:</p>
<p>“The matter will not end here.... Have a
care, young man....”</p>
<p>As I thought of all this, as the whole meaning
of what had seemed so mysterious now lay clear
before me, I would be seized with a sort of deadly
anguish, compared to which all my previous sufferings,
whether of body or mind, had been but
trivial. Could she, could Ottilie, have <i>known</i> of
this work? Could she—have <i>inspired</i> it?</p>
<p>The sweat that would break out upon me at
such a thought was more than all my fever had
wrung from my body, and my faithful leech would
wonder to find me faint and reeking, and would
puzzle his poor brains in vain upon the cause, and
decoct me new teas of dreadful compounds, febrifuges
which he vowed had never failed.</p>
<p>But then at other times the vision of my wife
would rise before me and shame me. I would see<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[250]</SPAN></span>
again her noble brow, her clear eye, her arched
and innocent lip, and in my weakness and the
passion of my longing I would turn and weep
upon my pillow to think that, having to my sorrow
lost her, I should come now to lose even my faith
in her, and yet should love her still with such mad
love.</p>
<p>Now there must be, as János would have it,
something remarkably tough in the breed of Jennico
for me to recover from such wounds both
bodily and mental. Recover I did, however, in
spite of all odds; and a resolve I made with returning
strength did a good deal to ease my mind,
tossed between such torturing fluctuations.</p>
<p>This resolve was no less than to leave the country
some fine morning, in secret, so soon as I
could undertake the journey with any likelihood
of being able to persevere in it, to speed to Budissin,
and discover for myself the real attitude of
Ottilie towards me. I was determined that, according
as I found her,—either what my heart
would still deem her, or yet so base a thing as the
fiend whispered,—that I would try to win her
back, were I to die in the attempt, or thrust her
from my life for ever.</p>
<p>Thus when I heard that my enemy and the
world believed me dead, when I realised that she<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[251]</SPAN></span>
too must probably share in the delusion, I was
glad, for not only would it materially facilitate
my re-entering the Duchy, but it would afford me
an excellent opportunity of judging her real feelings.
I had no doubt but that, if I set to work in
a proper manner and duly preserved my incognito,
I should be able, now that all pretext for quarantine
had disappeared, to secure an interview without
too much difficulty.</p>
<p>So all my desires hastening towards that goal,
I set myself to become a whole man again with so
much energy that even János was surprised at the
rapidity of my progress.</p>
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