Getting up at sunrise, Kondjé and I take a run through the coppices, her
little feet all wet with the dew. We feel free, merry, and careless,
dismissing the commissary to oblivion, and trusting to each other's
love, the full charms of which this solitary companionship has revealed
to us. I do not risk more than two excursions to Paris each week, one to
my aunt Eudoxia's, and one to my aunt Van Cloth's. Having made these
angel's visits, and performed various family duties, I vanish, by day or
by night as the case may be, eluding the vigilance of the spies who have
no doubt been set at my heels by the unscrupulous mother, or by that
rascal Kiusko, as we now call him. These adventures augment my
rapturous felicity; and if time and destiny have shorn me of the
privilege of my sultanship, which you say rendered me so proud and vain,
I retain at all events the glory of being happy.
I am in love, my dear fellow; and therefore I dream and forget. But
there is another still darker speck on my serene sky. Anna Campbell is
just approaching her eighteenth birthday, and I cannot think of this
without a good deal of melancholy. Although my uncle is delighted to
take occasional walks here, at the end of which he finds a capital glass
of madeira waiting for him, he, as you are aware, is not a person of
romantic temperament, and has already noted with his scrutinising eye
the ravages caused by a double passion, which bodes no good for his
daughter's married life.
The other night, on my return from my aunt Van Cloth's, he questioned me
very seriously on the subject. As to my disappointing his hopes, he
knows that the idea of such a thing would not even occur to me. That is
a matter of honour between us.
I spoke of a further delay before preparing my poor Kondjé-Gul for the
blow. He seemed touched at this token of the sincerity of my entirely
filial devotion to him.
The commissary has at last come; we have been discovered!
Yesterday afternoon we were sitting in the garden, under the shade of a
little clump of trees. My uncle, in a big arm-chair, was smoking and
listening, while I read to him the newspapers, which had just been
brought to us. Suddenly Kondjé-Gul, who was standing a few steps off
from us, arranging the plants for her window, uttered a suppressed cry,
and I saw her run up to me all at once, pale and trembling.
"What's the matter, dear?" I said to her.