o, to catch the boat for Europe. A dream of a rainy
morning, in the midst of the glowing furnace, may have been the origin
of the wild craving I had for my native land and Janet. The moist air
of flying showers and drenched spring buds surrounded her; I saw her
plainly lifting a rose's head; was it possible I had ever refused to be
her yokefellow? Could so noble a figure of a fair young woman have been
offered and repudiated again and again by a man in his senses? I spurned
the intolerable idiot, to stop reflection. Perhaps she did likewise now.
There was nothing to alarm me save my own eagerness.
The news of my father was perplexing, leading me to suppose him
re-established in London, awaiting the coming on of his Case. Whence the
money?
Money and my father, I knew, met as they divided, fortuitously; in
illustration of which, I well remembered, while passing in view of
the Key of the Adige along the Lombard plain, a circumstance during my
Alpine tour with Temple, of more importance to him than to me, when my
emulous friend, who would never be beaten, sprained his ankle severely
on the crags of a waterfall, not far from Innsbruck, and was invited
into a house by a young English lady, daughter of a retired Colonel of
Engineers of our army. The colonel was an exile from his country for no
grave crime: but, as he told us, as much an exile as if he had committed
a capital offence in being the father of nine healthy girls. He had
been, against his judgement, he averred, persuaded to fix on his
Tyrolese spot of ground by the two elder ones. Five were now married to
foreigners; thus they repaid him, by scattering good English blood on
the race of Counts and Freiherrs! 'I could understand the decrees of
Providence before I was a parent,' said this dear old Colonel Heddon.
'I was looking up at the rainbow when I heard your steps, asking myself
whether it was seen in England at that instant, and why on earth I
should be out of England!' He lived abroad to be able to dower his
girls. His sons-in-law were gentlemen; so far he was condemned to be
satisfied, but supposing all his girls married foreigners? His primitive
frankness charmed us, and it struck me that my susceptible Temple would
have liked to be in a position to reassure him with regard to the Lucy
of the four. We were obliged to confess that she was catching a foreign
accent. The old colonel groaned. He begged us to forgive him for
not treating us as strangers; his hea
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