must call her abandonment of me, yet, the most constantly recurring idea
of my mind on the subject was, what will the mess say--what will they
think at head-quarters?--the raillery, the jesting, the half-concealed
allusion, the tone of assumed compassion, which all awaited me, as each
of my comrades took up his line of behaving towards me, was, after all,
the most difficult thing to be borne, and I absolutely dreaded to join
my regiment, more thoroughly than did ever schoolboy to return to his
labour on the expiration of his holidays. I had framed to myself all
manner of ways of avoiding this dread event; sometimes I meditated an
exchange into an African corps--sometimes to leave the army altogether.
However, I turned the affair over in my mind--innumerable difficulties
presented themselves, and I was at last reduced to that stand-still
point, in which, after continual vacillation, one only waits for the
slightest impulse of persuasion from another, to adopt any, no matter
what suggestion. In this enviable frame of mind I sat sipping my wine,
and watching the clock for that hour at which, with a safe conscience, I
might retire to my bed, when the waiter roused me by demanding if my
name was Mr. Lorrequer, for that a gentleman having seen my card in the
bar, had been making inquiry for the owner of it all through the hotel.

"Yes," said I, "such is my name; but I am not acquainted with any one
here, that I can remember."

"The gentleman has ony arrived an hour since by the London mail, sir, and
here he is."

At this moment, a tall, dashing-looking, half-swaggering fellow, in a
very sufficient envelope of box-coats, entered the coffee-room, and
unwinding a shawl from his throat, showed me the honest and manly
countenance of my friend Jack Waller, of the __th dragoons, with whom I