een long absent
in remote lands; a traveller, an 'eccentric,' who likes a life of
savagery and adventure, and who has come back, after years of exile, to
see his family and be with his own. Imagine yourself for an instant to
be Bramleigh, and what you would have said to this? Had I simply
asked to be one of them, to call them by their Christian names, to be
presented to their friends as Cousin Anatole--I ask you now--seriously,
what you would have replied to such a noble appeal?"

"I don't know exactly what I should have said, but I think I can tell
you what I would have done."

"Well, out with it."

"I 'd have sent for the police, and handed you over to the authorities
for either a rogue or a madman."

"Bon soir. I wish you a good-night--pleasant dreams, too, if that be
possible."

"Don't go. Sit down. The dawn is just breaking, and you know I ordered
the horses for the first light."

"I must go into the air then. I must go where I can breathe."

"Take a cigar, and let us talk of something else."

"That is easy enough for _you_; you who treat everything as a mere
passing incident, and would make life a series of unconnected episodes.
You turn from this to that, just as you taste of this dish and that at
dinner; but I, who want to live a life--_entends-tu?_--to live a life:
to be to-morrow the successor of myself to-day, to carry with me an
identity--how am I to practise your philosophy?"

"Here come the horses; and I must say I am for once grateful to their
jingling bells, helping as they do to drown more nonsense than even you
usually give way to."

"How did we ever become friends? Can you explain that to me?"

"I suppose it must have been in one of your lucid moments, Anatole--for
you have them at times."

"Ah, I have! But if you 're getting complimentary, I 'd better be off.
Will you look to the bill? And I'll take charge of the baggage."

CHAPTER XXXI. ON THE ROAD TO ITALY.

"You 'd not guess who our neighbors of last night were, Julia," said
L'Estrange, as they sat at breakfast the next morning.

"I need not guess, for I know," said she, laughing. "The fact is,
George, my curiosity was so excited to see them that I got up as they
were about to start, and though the gray morning was only breaking at
the time, there was light enough for me to recognize Mr. Longworth and
his French friend, Count Pracontal."

"I know that; but I know more than that, Julia. What do you think of
my discovery,