The jeweller promised to deliver the message punctually; and, to guard against all mistakes, Beauchamp put down in writing his assumed name, and the number of his apartments in the hotel. He then--to do full justice to Mrs. Darlington's business--tried to bring the jeweller back to the story of the eyeglass; but it was all in vain. The man was like one of those birds whose correct ornithological name I do not know, but which boys call water-wagtails, and which go hopping from stone to stone, pausing lightly balanced on each for a moment, and then springing on to another, without ever returning to the same. It was in vain Beauchamp tried to elicit any farther information; he skipped on from subject to subject, and nothing farther could be made of him. Tired of the endeavour, the young Englishman at length rose and returned to his hotel, bidding the man send the trinkets he had bought. He there reported his ill success to Mrs. Darlington; and taking measures to guard against intrusion at the hour he had promised to be alone on the following nights, he waited anxiously for Captain Delaware's coming, with that degree of uncertainty--as to whether the young officer would ever revisit the jeweller, and whether he would come even if he did receive the message,--which Beauchamp could not endure with that feeling, or rather assumption, of indifference, with which he sometimes cheated himself. From seven till ten on the two following nights, he paced his little saloon with a degree of anxiety which he had hardly ever felt before. Every step upon the stairs caught his ear--every voice in the anteroom, where he had placed his own servant on guard, made him pause and listen; but it was all in vain; and on both nights he heard ten, and even eleven, strike before he abandoned the consolatory reflection that clocks might differ, and that the object of his expectation might still appear. As he now felt certain, however, that William Delaware was in the same city with himself, he resolved to wait on in Paris; and, if the message he had left proved vain, to endeavour once more to discover his dwelling by other means. CHAPTER VI. Henry Beauchamp was, beyond all doubt, by nature an impatient man; but, for the first five-and-twenty years of his life, his impatience had found so little in his state or situation whereon to work, that it had gone lame for want of exercise. Nature--notwithstanding Locke--had given him a store of noble feelings, and education had added thereto a store of good principles; and, with all this to guard him against evil desires, he had found little in the world to wish for that his fortune or influence had not enabled him to obtain with ease: thus he was only now beginning to find matters whereon to exercise the virtue of patience.