I left the
House in a considerable uproar, and strolled on to the house of a
friend of mine, one Mme. Devarges, the widow of a French gentleman
who had found his way to Whittingham from New Calendonia. Politeness
demanded the assumption that he had found his way to New Caledonia
owing to political troubles, but the usual cloud hung over the precise
date and circumstances of his patriotic sacrifice. Madame sometimes
considered it necessary to bore herself and others with denunciations
of the various tyrants or would-be tyrants of France; but, apart from
this pious offering on the shrine of her husband's reputation, she
was a bright and pleasant little woman. I found assembled round her
tea-table a merry party, including Donna Antonia, unmindful of her
father's agonies, and one Johnny Carr, who deserves mention as being
the only honest man in Aureataland. I speak, of course, of the place
as I found it. He was a young Englishman, what they call a "cadet," of
a good family, shipped off with a couple of thousand pounds to make
his fortune. Land was cheap among us, and Johnny had bought an estate
and settled down as a landowner.
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