"Trouble your head no more about it," said Paget, while playing with the tassels of his gold sash; "we'll laugh the affair over at Brighton in a few days or so. Soothe your mind, meantime, by the study of these classic frescoes. I wonder who the devil decorated this villa!" "Cupid and Psyche," said Burrard, who had been adding a few decorations, such as beards and tails, with a burnt cork; "Pyramus and Thisbe; and, by Jove, the story of Leda!" "Egad! such lively imaginations and odd propensities those pagan fellows had! Au revoir, Crawford; we'll have the _générale_ beaten for the last time on Spanish ground to-morrow, and then hey for the high road to Old England!" added the gay hussar, who, before six months were past, figured in an elopement, a duel, and damages to the tune of twenty thousand pounds--an affair that made more noise in the world of fashion than even the Spanish campaign. Cosmo was at last alone, and though he mixed a glass of brandy with a goblet of champagne, he felt strange and sad thoughts stealing over him. He was hot and flushed, and his heart beat tumultuously and anxiously, he knew not why. He threw open the sash of one of the lofty windows, which were divided in lattice-fashion from the ceiling to the floor, and looked out upon the night. It was silent, clear, and starry, and not a sound broke the calm stillness, save the chafing of the waves on the rocks that bordered the bay. The snow had melted, and the garden of the villa being thickly planted with evergreens, looked quite unlike a winter one. Cosmo's brain, at least his whole nervous system, seemed to have received a shock by that fall from his horse at Lugo. He was restless, feverish, and anxious, without knowing why; for being brave as man could be, he had no fear for the morrow, and really cared very little whether a battle was fought or not. "What is this that is stealing over me--can it be illness?" he asked of himself. Thoughts and memories of home, his family, and many an old and once tender association that he had long forgotten were stealing over him now, together with an uncontrollable sadness and depression of mind: his father's cheerful voice, his mother's loving face, came vividly to recollection, with emotions of tenderness for which he could not account--emotions which he strove to repress as unnatural to him, and which actually provoked him, by the strange pertinacity with which they thrust themselves upon his fancy. "Pshaw!" said he, "that deuced tumble in front of the enemy has unmanned me--and that fellow, too! Confound him," he muttered through his clenched teeth, "I hate him!"