doing such a deed were as ignoble as the sticking
of swine.«
    »A wild boar is near akin to a sow,« said the Bohemian, without flinching
from the sharp look with which Quentin regarded him, or altering, in the
slightest degree, the caustic indifference which he affected in his language;
»and many men,« he subjoined, »find both pride, pleasure, and profit, in
sticking them.«
    Astonished at the man's ready confidence, and uncertain whether he did not
know more of his own history and feelings than was pleasant for him to converse
upon, Quentin broke off a conversation in which he had gained no advantage over
Maugrabin, and fell back to his accustomed post beside the ladies.
    We have already observed, that a considerable degree of familiarity had
begun to establish itself between them. The elder Countess treated him (being
once well assured of the nobility of his birth) like a favoured equal; and
though her niece showed her regard to their protector less freely, yet, under
every disadvantage of bashfulness and timidity, Quentin thought he could plainly
perceive, that his company and conversation were not by any means indifferent to
her.
    Nothing gives such life and soul to youthful gaiety as the consciousness
that it is successfully received; and Quentin had accordingly, during the former
period of their journey, amused his fair charge with the liveliness of his
conversation, and the songs and tales of his country, the former of which he
sung in his native language, while his efforts to render the latter into his
foreign and imperfect French, gave rise to a hundred little mistakes and errors
of speech, as diverting as the narratives themselves. But on this anxious
morning, he rode beside the Ladies of Croye without any of his usual attempts to
amuse them, and they could not help observing his silence as something
remarkable.
    »Our young companion has seen a wolf,« said the Lady Hameline, alluding to
an ancient superstition, »and he has lost his tongue in consequence.«38
    »To say I had tracked a fox were nearer the mark,« thought Quentin, but gave
the reply no utterance.
    »Are you well, Seignior Quentin?« said the Countess Isabelle, in a tone of
interest at which she herself blushed, while she felt that it was something more
than the distance between them warranted.
    »He hath sat up carousing with the jolly friars,« said the Lady Hameline;
»the Scots are like the Germans, who spend all their mirth over the Rheinwein,
and bring only their staggering steps to the dance in the evening