other
of their lives, enjoyed similar privileges, and known the fascination of
intimacy in some household, where the affections became engaged as the
intellect expanded, and, while winning another's heart, have elevated
their own. But to know the full charm of such intercourse, one must have
been as I was--a prisoner--an orphan--almost friendless in the world--a
very 'waif' upon the shore of destiny. I cannot express the intense
pleasure these evenings afforded me. The cottage was my home, and more
than my home. It was a shrine at which my heart worshipped--for I was
in love! Easy as the confession is to make now, tortures would not have
wrung it from me then!

In good truth, it was long before I knew it; nor can I guess how much
longer the ignorance might have lasted, when General Urleben suddenly
dispelled the clouds, by informing me that he had just received from the
Minister of War at Vienna a demand for the name, rank, and regiment of
his prisoner, previous to the negotiation for his exchange.

'You will fill up these blanks, Tiernay,' said he, 'and within a month,
or less, you will be once more free, and say adieu to Kuffstein.'

Had the paper contained my dismissal from the service, I shame to own
it would have been more welcome! The last few months had changed all the
character of my life, suggested new hopes and new ambitions. The career
I used to glory in had grown distasteful; the comrades I once longed to
rejoin were now become almost repulsive to my imagination. The marquise
had spoken much of emigrating to some part of the new world beyond seas,
and thither my fancy alike pointed. Perhaps my dreams of a future were
not the less rose-coloured that they received no shadow from anything
like a 'fact.' The old lady's geographical knowledge was neither
accurate nor extensive, and she contrived to invest this land of promise
with old associations of what she once heard of Pondicherry--with
certain features belonging to the United States. A glorious country it
would indeed have been, which, within a month's voyage, realised all
the delights of the tropics, with the healthful vigour of the temperate
zone, and where, without an effort beyond the mere will, men amassed
enormous fortunes in a year or two. In a calmer mood, I might, indeed
must, have been struck with the wild inconsistency of the old lady's
imaginings, and looked with somewhat of scepticism on the map for that
spot of earth so richly endowed; but no