However interested I felt in all Trevanion was telling me, I could not
help falling into a train of thinking on my first acquaintance with the
Callonbys. There are, perhaps, but few things more humiliating than the
knowledge that any attention or consideration we have met with, has been
paid us in mistake for another; and in the very proportion that they were
prized before, are they detested when the truth is known to us.

To all the depressing influences these thoughts suggested, came the
healing balm that Lady Jane was true to me--that she, at least, however
others might be biassed by worldly considerations--that she cared for me
--for myself alone. My reader (alas! for my character for judgment)
knows upon how little I founded the conviction; but I have often, in
these Confessions, avowed my failing, par excellence, to be a great taste
for self-deception; and here was a capital occasion for its indulgence.

"We shall have abundant time to discuss this later on," said Trevanion,
laying his hand upon my shoulder to rouse my wandering attention--"for
now, I perceive, we have only eight minutes to spare."

As he spoke, a dragoon officer, in an undress, rode up to the window of
the carriage, and looking steadily at our party for a few seconds, asked
if we were "Messieurs les Anglais;" and, almost without waiting for
reply, added, "You had better not go any farther in your carriage, for the
next turn of the road will bring you in sight of the village."

We accordingly stopped the driver, and having (with) some difficulty
aroused O'Leary, got out upon the road. The militaire here gave his
horse to a groom, and proceeded to guide us through a corn-field by a
narrow path, with whose windings and crossings he appeared quite