As I repeated the word after him, all the broad smiling landscape of hill and dale and stream which lay spread out before me seemed to be enveloped in a black mist that hid it from my view. A hoarse sound like the rushing of water was in my ears, and a horrid ‘whirring’ like wheels in my brain; then it all cleared off again. The sun broke out over the valley, my senses had returned; but I thought that the earth would never look the same to me again. ‘Do you not congratulate me?’ inquired Monsieur de Nesselrode, quietly. ‘It is a charming climate, I understand, and the place is peopled with French. The salary is almost nominal, so are the duties; but the position is one that I can accept without blushing, and I shall, at all events, have an arena for work amongst my countrymen, small as it may be.’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Does not the appointment meet your views for me? Will it not be better than dragging out four more years of idleness and false shame at the Château des Roses?’ ‘Oh yes.’ ‘I am not capable of much at present, you know, whatever I may be hereafter. You—in the goodness of your heart and friendship—may think me fit for a higher post, but I feel I am not. I have crippled my powers by nonusage: I must crawl now before I can fly. Perhaps, after a year or two, I may be fit for something better than the ministration of affairs in such a place as Algiers.’ ‘I am sure you will.’ I was so angry with myself for not being able to say something better to him than this. I saw he wanted encouragement to take up this paltry appointment in a strange country. He had applied for it solely on my recommendation, and now that it had come, I had no words in which to praise and thank him for the compliment he had paid to my advice. But Algiers—a place so far removed from all his friends, and replete, as I ignorantly imagined, with dangers from climate and people—I did not expect that my counsel would have taken so unwelcome a form. ‘You do not congratulate me, mademoiselle,’ he repeated presently. ‘Do you not consider the prospect a good one?’ ‘Oh yes,’ I answered nervously; ‘very good indeed—that is, it is rather far from here, is it not, monsieur?’ ‘It is very far,’ he said gravely. ‘I do not suppose, when I have once left it, that I shall ever see St. Pucelle again; for the remembrances of the old château have no charm for me. A few weeks back, I would have declared myself ready to bear anything sooner than go to Algiers; but things that have come to my knowledge lately have made me think that the greater distance I put between myself and this place the better.’ ‘Have you any fresh trouble?’ I inquired anxiously, for he was my best friend in St. Pucelle, and I had come to be interested in all that befell him. ‘Yes, a very deep trouble!’ ‘What is it, monsieur? Will you not tell me?’ He turned round upon his side, so that his face could look directly into mine.