Lothair watched the equipage until it vanished in the distance.

"It is impossible to forget that countenance," he said; "and I fancy I did
hear at the time that she had married an American. Well, I shall meet
her at dinner -- that is something." And he sprang into his saddle.



CHAPTER 24


The Oxford professor, who was the guest of the American colonel, was
quite a young man, of advanced opinions on all subjects, religious,
social, and political. He was clever, extremely well-informed, so far
as books can make a man knowing, but unable to profit even by his
limited experience of life from a restless vanity and overflowing
conceit, which prevented him from ever observing or thinking of any
thing but himself. He was gifted with a great command of words, which
took the form of endless exposition, varied by sarcasm and passages of
ornate jargon. He was the last person one would have expected to
recognize in an Oxford professor; but we live in times of transition.

A Parisian man of science, who had passed his life in alternately
fighting at barricades and discovering planets, had given Colonel
Campian, who had lived much in the French capital, a letter of
introduction to the professor, whose invectives against the principles
of English society were hailed by foreigners as representative of the
sentiments of venerable Oxford. The professor, who was not satisfied
with his home career, and, like many men of his order of mind, had
dreams of wild vanity which the New World, they think, can alone