'My dear friends,' I said - 'for you must allow me to call you that, who have no others within so many hundred leagues - perhaps you will think me fanciful and sentimental; and perhaps indeed I am; but there is one service that I would beg of you before all others.You see me set here on the top of this rock in the midst of your city.Even with what liberty I have, I have the opportunity to see a myriad roofs, and I dare to say, thirty leagues of sea and land.All this hostile! Under all these roofs my enemies dwell; wherever I see the smoke of a house rising, I must tell myself that some one sits before the chimney and reads with joy of our reverses.Pardon me, dear friends, I know that you must do the same, and I do not grudge at it! With you, it is all different.Show me your house then, were it only the chimney, or, if that be not visible, the quarter of the town in which it lies!
So, when I look all about me, I shall be able to say: "THERE IS ONE
HOUSE IN WHICH I AM NOT QUITE UNKINDLY THOUGHT OF."'
Flora stood a moment.
'It is a pretty thought,' said she, 'and, as far as regards Ronald and myself, a true one.Come, I believe I can show you the very smoke out of our chimney.'
So saying, she carried me round the battlements towards the opposite or southern side of the fortress, and indeed to a bastion almost immediately overlooking the place of our projected flight.
Thence we had a view of some foreshortened suburbs at our feet, and beyond of a green, open, and irregular country rising towards the Pentland Hills.The face of one of these summits (say two leagues from where we stood) is marked with a procession of white scars.
And to this she directed my attention.
'You see these marks?' she said.'We call them the Seven Sisters.
Follow a little lower with your eye, and you will see a fold of the hill, the tops of some trees, and a tail of smoke out of the midst of them.That is Swanston Cottage, where my brother and I are living with my aunt.If it gives you pleasure to see it, I am glad.We, too, can see the castle from a corner in the garden, and we go there in the morning often - do we not, Ronald? - and we think of you, M.de Saint-Yves; but I am afraid it does not altogether make us glad.'
'Mademoiselle!' said I, and indeed my voice was scarce under command, 'if you knew how your generous words - how even the sight of you - relieved the horrors of this place, I believe, I hope, I know, you would be glad.I will come here daily and look at that dear chimney and these green hills, and bless you from the heart, and dedicate to you the prayers of this poor sinner.Ah! I do not say they can avail!'
'Who can say that, M.de Saint-Yves?' she said softly.'But I think it is time we should be going.'
'High time,' said Ronald, whom (to say the truth) I had a little forgotten.
On the way back, as I was laying myself out to recover lost ground with the youth, and to obliterate, if possible, the memory of my last and somewhat too fervent speech, who should come past us but the major? I had to stand aside and salute as he went by, but his eyes appeared entirely occupied with Flora.
'Who is that man?' she asked.
'He is a friend of mine,' said I.'I give him lessons in French, and he has been very kind to me.'
'He stared,' she said, - 'I do not say, rudely; but why should he stare?'
'If you do not wish to be stared at, mademoiselle, suffer me to recommend a veil,' said I.
She looked at me with what seemed anger.'I tell you the man stared,' she said.
And Ronald added.'Oh, I don't think he meant any harm.I suppose he was just surprised to see us walking about with a pr - with M.
Saint-Yves.'
But the next morning, when I went to Chevenix's rooms, and after I had dutifully corrected his exercise - 'I compliment you on your taste,' said he to me.
'I beg your pardon?' said I.
'Oh no, I beg yours,' said he.'You understand me perfectly, just as I do you.'
I murmured something about enigmas.
'Well, shall I give you the key to the enigma?' said he, leaning back.'That was the young lady whom Goguelat insulted and whom you avenged.I do not blame you.She is a heavenly creature.'
'With all my heart, to the last of it!' said I.'And to the first also, if it amuses you! You are become so very acute of late that I suppose you must have your own way.'
'What is her name?' he asked.
'Now, really!' said I.'Do you think it likely she has told me?'
'I think it certain,' said he.
I could not restrain my laughter.'Well, then, do you think it likely I would tell you?' I cried.
'Not a bit.' said he.'But come, to our lesson!'