“_Oh, mon Dieu, quelle espièglerie!_” cried out the captain. “And this a Greig too! Well, I do not wonder that your poor uncle stayed so long away from home; faith, he'd have died of an _ennui_ else. Miss Walkinshaw is--Miss Walkinshaw; a countryman of her own should know better than I all that is to be known about her. But 'tis not our affair, Mr. Greig. For sure 'tis enough that we find her smiling, gentle, tolerant, what you call the 'perfect lady'--_n'est ce pas?_And of all the virtues, upon my word, kindness is the best and rarest, and that she has to a miracle.” “I'm thinking that is not a corsair's creed, Captain Thurot,” said I, smiling at the gentleman's eagerness. He was standing over me like a lighthouse, with his eyes on fire, gesturing with his arms as they had been windmill sails. “No, faith! but 'tis a man's, Master Greig, and I have been happy with it. Touching our fair friend, I may say that, much as I admire her, I agree with some others that ours were a luckier cause without her. Gad! the best thing you could do, Mr. Greig, would be to marry her yourself and take her back with you to Scotland.” “What! byway of Paris in Father Hamilton's glass coach,” I said, bantering to conceal my confusion at such a notion. “H'm,” said he. “Father Hamilton and the lady are a pair.” He walked a little up and down the room as if he were in a quandary. “A pair,” he resumed. “I fancied I could see to the very centre of the Sphinx itself, for all men are in ourselves if we only knew it, till I came upon this Scotswoman and this infernal Flemish-English priest of Dix-munde. Somehow, for them Antoine Thurot has not the key in himself yet. Still, 'twill arrive, 'twill arrive! I like the lady--and yet I wish she were a thousand miles away; I like the man too, but a Jesuit is too many men at once to be sure of; and, Gad! I can scarcely sleep at nights for wondering what he may be plotting. This grand tour of his-” “Stop, stop!” I cried, in a fear that he might compromise himself in an ignorance of my share in the tour in question; “I must tell you that I am going with Father Hamilton as his secretary, although it bothers me to know what scrivening is to be accomplished in a glass coach. Like enough I am to be no more, in truth, than the gentleman's companion or courier, and it is no matter so long as I am moving.” “Indeed, and is it so?” cried Captain Thurot, stopping as if he had been shot. “And how happens it that this priest is willing to take you, that are wholly a foreigner and a stranger to the country?” “Miss Walkinshaw recommended me,” said I.