hat
things done in the glad innocency of the heart were "wrong"); and Cecil,
as soon as she had sprung down, snatched her hand from Cos, and went up
to her own room.

The Colonel's lips were pressed close together, and his forehead had the
dark frown that Guy wears in his portrait.

It had been done with another, so it was all wrong; but oh! Syd, my
friend, if the "dry" that was drunk, and the drag that was tooled, and
the weed that was smoked, had been _yours_, wouldn't it have been the
most charming caprice of the most charming woman!

That night, at dinner, a letter by the afternoon's post came to the
Colonel. It was "On her Majesty's Service," and his mother asked him
anxiously what it was.

"Only to tell me to join soon," said he, carelessly, giving me a sign to
keep the contents of a similar letter I had just received to myself;
which I should have done anyhow, as I had reason to hope that the
disclosure of them would have quenched the light in some bright eyes
beside me.

"Ordered off at last, thank God!" said Syd, handing his father the
letter as soon as the ladies were gone. "There's a train starts at
12.40, isn't there, for town? You and I, Ned, had better go to-night.
You don't look so charmed, old fellow, as you did when you went out to
Scinde. I say, don't tell my sisters; there is no need to make a row in
the house. Governor, you'll prepare my mother; I must bid _her_
good-by."

I _did not_ view the Crimea with the unmingled, devil-me-care delight
with which I had gone out under "fighting Napier" nine years before,
for Blanche's sunshiny face had made life fairer to me; and to obey Syd,
and go without a farewell of her, was really too great a sacrifice to
friendship. But he and I went to the drawing-rooms, chatted, and took
coffee as if nothing had chanced, till he could no longer stand seeing
Cecil, still excited, singing chansons to Cos, who was leaning
enraptured over the instrument, and he went off to his own room. The
other girls and men were busy playing the Race game; Blanche and I were
sitting in the back drawing-room beside the fire, and the words that
decided my destiny were so few, that I cite them as a useful lesson to
those novelists who are in the habit of making their heroes, while
waiting breathless to hear their fate, recite off at a cool canter four
pages of the neatest-turned sentences without a single break-down or a
single pull-up, to see how the lady takes it.

"Blanche, I m