In another instant it would have been heard, for it was forming on the lips of the Zouave lieutenant.

Fate willed it otherwise. Before it could be given, the outer door opened, admitting a man whose presence caused a sudden suspension of the proceedings.

Hurrying across the courtyard, he threw himself between the soldiers and their victim, at the same time drawing a flag from beneath his coat, and spreading it over the condemned man.

Even the drunken Zouaves dared not fire through that flag. It was the Royal Standard of England!

But there was a double protection for the prisoner. Almost at the same instant another man stepped hastily across the courtyard and flouted a second flag in the eyes of the disappointed executioners!

It claimed equal respect, for it was the banner of the Stars and Stripes--the emblem of the only true Republic on earth.

Maynard had served under both flags, and for a moment he felt his affections divided.

He knew not to whom he was indebted for the last; but when he reflected who had sent the first--for it was Sir George Vernon who bore it--his heart trembled with a joy far sweeter than could have been experienced by the mere thought of delivery from death!

CHAPTER THIRTY NINE.

ONCE MORE IN WESTBOURNE.

Once more in the British metropolis, Mr Swinton was seated in his room.

It was the same set of "furnished apartments," containing that cane chair with which he had struck his ill-starred wife.

She was there, too, though not seated upon the chair.

Reclined along a common horse-hair sofa, with squab and cushions hard and scuffed, she was reading one of De Kock's novels, in translation.

Fan was not master of the French tongue, though skilled in many of those accomplishments for which France has obtained special notoriety.

It was after breakfast time, though the cups and saucers were still upon the table.

A common white-metal teapot, the heel of a half-quartern loaf, the head and tail of a herring, seen upon a blue willow pattern plate, told that the meal had not been epicurean.

Swinton was smoking "bird's-eye" in a briar-root pipe. It would have been a cigar, had his exchequer allowed it.

Never in his life had this been so low. He had spent his last shilling in pursuit of the Girdwoods--in keeping their company in Paris, from which they, as he himself, had just returned to London.

As yet success had not crowned his scheme, but appeared distant as ever.

The storekeeper's widow, notwithstanding her aspirations after a titled alliance, was from a country whose people are proverbially "cute." She was, at all events, showing herself prudent, as Mr Swinton discovered in a conversation held with her on the eve of their departure from Paris.

It was on a subject of no slight importance, originating in a proposal on his part to become her son in-law. It was introductory to an offer he intended making to the young lady herself.

But the offer was not made, Mrs Girdwood having given reasons for its postponement.

They seemed somewhat unsubstantial, leaving him to suppose he might still hope.

The true reason was not made known to him, which was, that the American mother had become suspicious about his patent of nobility. After all, he might not be a lord. And this, notwithstanding his perfect playing of the part, which the quondam guardsman, having jostled a good deal against lords, was enabled to do.

She liked the man much--he flattered her sufficiently to deserve it--and used every endeavour to make her daughter like him. But she had determined, before things should go any further, to know something of his family. There was something strange in his still travelling _incognito_. The reasons he assigned for it were not satisfactory.

Upon this point she must get thoroughly assured. England was the place to make the inquiry, and thither had she transported herself and her belongings--as before, putting up at the aristocratic Clarendon.

To England Swinton had followed, allowing only a day to elapse.

By staying longer in Paris, he would have been in pawn. He had just sufficient cash to clear himself from the obscure hotel where he had stopped, pay for a Boulogne boat, and a "bus" from London Bridge to his lodgings in far Westbourne, where he found his Fan not a shilling richer than himself. Hence that herring for breakfast, eaten on the day after his return.

He was poor in spirits as in purse. Although Mrs Girdwood had not stated the true reason for postponing her daughter's reception of his marriage proposal, he could conjecture it. He felt pretty sure that the widow had come to England to make inquiries about him.

And what must they result in? Exposure! How could it be otherwise?

His name was known in certain circles of London. So also his character.

If she should get into these, his marriage scheme would be frustrated at once and for ever.

And he had become sufficiently acquainted with her shrewdness to know she would never accept him for a son-in-law, without being certain about the title--which in her eyes alone rendered him eligible.

If his game was not yet up, the cards left in his hand were poor. More than ever did they require skilful playing.

What should be his next move?

It was about this his brain was busy, as he sat pulling away at his pipe.

"Any one called since I've been gone?" he asked of his wife without turning toward her.

Had he done so, he might have observed a slight start caused by the inquiry. She answered, hesitatingly:

"Oh! no--yes--now I think of it I had a visitor--one."

"Who?"

"Sir Robert Cottrell. You remember our meeting him at Brighton?"

"Of course I remember it. Not likely to forget the name of the puppy.

How came he to call?"

"He expected to see you."

"Indeed, did he! How did he know where we were living?"

"Oh, that! I met him one day as I was passing through Kensington Gardens, near the end of the Long Walk. He asked me where we were staying. At first I didn't intend telling him. But he said he wanted particularly to see you; and so I gave him your address."

"I wasn't at home!"

"I told him that; but said I expected you every day. He came to inquire if you had come back."

"Did he? What a wonderful deal he cared about my coming back. In the Long Walk you met him? I suppose you have been showing yourself in the Row every day?"

"No I haven't, Richard. I've only been there once or twice--You can't blame me for that? I'd like to know who could stay everlastingly here, in these paltry apartments, with that shrewish landlady constantly popping out and in, as if to see whether I'd carried off the contents of our trunks. Heaven knows, it's a wretched existence at best; but absolutely hideous inside these lodgings!"

Glancing around the cheaply-furnished parlour, seeing the head and tail of the herring, with the other scraps of their poor repast, Swinton could not be otherwise than impressed with the truth of his wife's words.