han any one knew, even the
young lady herself; and now that he found chances for long talks and short
gallops with her, he got on better than ever. He was just the kind of
youngster a girl of eighteen would naturally like to have ride by her
side. He was handsome; at any rate, he was the handsomest man she had seen
in the desert, and the desert was just then her sphere of society. You
could see in his figure how strong he was, and in his face how brave he
was. He was a good fellow, too; "tendir and trew" as the Douglas of the
ballad; sincere, frank, thoroughly truthful and honorable. Every way he
seemed to be that being that a woman most wants, a potential and devoted
protector. Whenever Clara looked in his face her eyes said, without her
knowledge, "I trust you."

Now, as we have already stated, Thurstane's eyes were uncommonly fine and
expressive. Of the very darkest blue that ever was seen in anybody's head,
and shaded, moreover, by remarkably long chestnut lashes, they had the
advantages of both blue eyes and black ones, being as gentle as the one
and as fervent as the other. Accordingly, a sort of optical conversation
commenced between the two young people. Every time that Clara's glance
said, "I trust you," Thurstane's responded, "I will die for you." It was a
perilous sort of dialogue, and liable to involve the two souls which
looked out from these sparkling, transparent windows. Before long the
Lieutenant's modest heart took courage, and his stammering tongue began to
be loosed somewhat, so that he uttered things which frightened both him
and Clara. Not that the remarks were audacious in themselves, but he was
conscious of so much unexpressed meaning behind them, and she was so ready
to guess that there might be such a meaning!

It seems ridiculous that a fellow who could hold his head straight up
before a storm of cannon shot, should be positively bashful. Yet so it
was. The boy had been through West Point, to be sure; but he had studied
there, and not flirted; the Academy had not in any way demoralized him. On
the whole, in spite of swearing under gross provocation, and an
inclination toward strictness in discipline, he answered pretty well for a
Bayard.

His bashfulness was such, at least in the presence of Clara, that he
trembled to the tips of his fingers in merely making this remark: "Miss
Van Diemen, this journey is the pleasantest thing in my whole life."

Clara blushed until she dazzled him and seeme