e front of the inn, where I continued to be amused
by the successive departures of travellers--the fussy and the offhand,
the niggardly and the lavish--all exhibiting their different characters
in that diagnostic moment of the farewell: some escorted to the stirrup
or the chaise door by the chamberlain, the chambermaids, and the waiters
almost in a body, others moving off under a cloud, without human
countenance. In the course of this I became interested in one for whom
this ovation began to assume the proportions of a triumph; not only the
under-servants, but the barmaid, the landlady, and my friend the
postmaster himself, crowding about the steps to speed his departure. I
was aware, at the same time, of a good deal of merriment, as though the
traveller were a man of a ready wit, and not too dignified to air it in
that society. I leaned forward with a lively curiosity; and the next
moment I had blotted myself behind the teapot. The popular traveller had
turned to wave a farewell; and behold! he was no other than my cousin
Alain. It was a change of the sharpest from the angry, pallid man I had
seen at Amersham Place. Ruddy to a fault, illuminated with vintages,
crowned with his curls like Bacchus, he now stood before me for an
instant, the perfect master of himself, smiling with airs of conscious
popularity and insufferable condescension. He reminded me at once of a
royal duke, of an actor turned a little elderly, and of a blatant bagman
who should have been the illegitimate son of a gentleman. A moment after
he was gliding noiselessly on the road to London.

I breathed again. I recognised, with heartfelt gratitude, how lucky I
had been to go in by the stable-yard instead of the hostelry door, and
what a fine occasion of meeting my cousin I had lost by the purchase of
the claret-coloured chaise! The next moment I remembered that there was
a waiter present. No doubt but he must have observed when I crouched
behind the breakfast equipage; no doubt but he must have commented on
this unusual and undignified behaviour; and it was essential that I
should do something to remove the impression.

"Waiter!" said I, "that was the nephew of Count Carwell that just drove
off, wasn't it?"

"Yes, sir: Viscount Carwell we calls him," he replied.

"Ah, I thought as much," said I. "Well, well, damn all these Frenchmen,
say I!"

"You may say so indeed, sir," said the waiter. "They ain't not to say in
the same field with our 'ome-rais