nst it was useless, and she trusted Lord B.
would forget her, etc., etc. All this in well-chosen language, and
written with an exceedingly good pen.

It was lucky his letter to the colonel had not been sent. In such
sorrows as these a soldier learns how his regiment is his real home,
how his comrades are the staunchest, the least obtrusive, and the
sincerest of friends.

Patting his charger's neck at the very next field-day, Bearwarden
told himself there was much to live for still; that it would be
unsoldierlike, unmanly, childish, to neglect duty, to wince from
pleasure, to turn his back on all the world had to offer, only because
a woman followed her nature and changed her mind.

So he bore it very well, and those who knew him best wondered he cared
so little: and all the while he never heard a strain of music, nor
felt a ray of sunshine, nor looked on beauty of any kind whatever,
without that gnawing cruel pain at his heart. Thus the years passed
on, and the women of his family declared that Bearwarden was a
confirmed old bachelor.

When he met Miss Bruce at Lady Goldthred's, no doubt he admired her
beauty and approved of her manner, but it was neither beauty nor
manner, nor could he have explained what it was, that caused the
pulses within him to stir, as they stirred long ago--that brought back
a certain flavour of the old draught he had quaffed so eagerly, to
find it so bitter at the dregs. Another meeting with Maud, a dance
or two, a whisper on a crowded staircase, and Lord Bearwarden told
himself that the deep wound had healed at last; that the grass was
growing fresh and fair over the grave of a dead love; that for him
too, as for others, there might still be an interest in the chances of
the great game.

Surely the blind restored to sight is more grateful, more joyous, more
triumphant, than he who, born in darkness, finds himself overwhelmed
and dazzled with the glare of his new gift!

Some men are so strangely constituted that they like a woman all the
better for "snubbing" them. Lord Bearwarden had never felt so grave
an interest in Miss Bruce as when he entered the barracks under the
impression she had cut him dead, without the slightest pretext or
excuse.

Not so Tom Ryfe. In that gentleman's mind mingled the several
disagreeable sensations of surprise, anger, jealousy, and disgust. Of
these he chewed the bitter cud while he rode home, wondering with whom
Miss Bruce could thus dare to parade hers