The rain had cease[d]; the wind likewise had subsided; and I think, if I could have seen the west, the sun, within a few minutes of its setting, was just shedding one parting smile over the Olympian. Several of the travellers now rose. There was a general ordering out of gigs and assuming of coats and cloaks. In a few minutes the room was cleared, with the exception of two or three whose intention it was to take up their quarters at Stancliffe’s for the night. While these discussed professional subjects, I maintained my station at the window, watching the passengers whom the gleam of sunshine had called out at the close of a rainy day.

In particular, I marked the movements of a pretty woman who seemed waiting for someone at the door of a splendid mercer’s shop opposite. Drawing aside the green blind, I tried to catch her eye, displaying a gold snuff-box under pretence of taking a pinch, and by the same action exhibiting two or three flashy rings with which my white aristocratic hand was adorned. Her eye was caught by the glitter. She looked at me from amongst a profusion of curls, glossy and silky though of the genuine Angrian hue. From me her glance reverted to her own green silk frock and pretty sandalled feet. I fancied she smiled. Whether she did or not, I certainly returned the compliment by a most seductive grin. She blushed. Encouraged by this sign of sympathy, I kissed my hand to her. She giggled, and retreated into the shop. While I was vainly endeavouring to trace her figure, of which no more than the dim outline was visible through the gloom of the interior, increased by waving streamers of silk and print pendant to the shop door, someone touched my arm. I turned. It was a waiter.

‘Sir, you are wanted, if you please.’

‘Who wants me?’

‘A gentleman upstairs. Came this afternoon. Dined here. I’ve just carried in the wine, and he desired me to tell the young gentleman in the traveller’s room who wore a dark frock-coat and white jeans that he would be happy to have the pleasure of his company for the evening.’

‘Do you know who he is?’ I asked.

‘I’ve not heard his name, sir, but he came in his own carriage – a genteel barouche. A military looking person. I should fancy he may be an officer in the army.’

‘Well,’ said I, ‘show me up to his apartment,’ and as the slippered waiter glided before me I followed with some little curiosity to see who the owner of the genteel barouche might be. Not that there was anything at all strange in the circumstance, for Stancliffe’s, being the head hotel in Zamorna, every day received aristocratic visitants within its walls. The Czar himself usually changed horses here in his journeys to and from his capital.

Charles Townshend remembers
the trial of Zamorna, after
his defeat at Edwardston,
and meets an old friend

Traversing the inn-passage – wetter and dirtier than ever, and all in tumult for the evening Verdopolitan-coach had just come in and the passengers were calling for supper and beds and rooms and at the same time rushing wildly after their luggage – traversing, I say, this rich melée, in the course of which transit I nearly ran over a lady and a little girl and was in requital called a rude scoundrel by their companion, a big fellow in mustachios – traversing, I once more repeat, this area wherein a woman with a child in her arms – dripping wet, for she had ridden on the outside of the coach – came against me full drive, I at length, after turning the angle of [a] second long passage and passing through a pair of large folding doors, found myself in another region. It was a hall with rooms about it, green mats at every door, a lamp in the centre, a broad staircase ascending to a gallery above, which ran round three sides of the hall, leaving space in the fourth for a great arched window. All here was clean, quiet, stately. This was the new part of the hotel, which had been erected since the year of independence. Before that time, Stancliffe’s was but a black-looking old public, whose best apartment was not more handsomely furnished than its present traveller’s room. As I ascended the staircase, chancing to look through the window I got a full and noble view of that new court-house which, rising upon its solid basement, so majestically fronts the first inn in Zamorna. There it was that, after the disastrous day of Edwardston, Jeremiah Simpson opened his court martial; there, on such an evening as this.