ust bid you good-by to-night." Blanche turned to me in
bewildered anxiety. "I must join my troop: perhaps I may be sent to the
Crimea. I could go happily if I thought you would regret me?"

Brutally selfish that was to be sure, but she did not take it so. She
looked as if she was going to faint, and for fear she should, trusting
to the engrossing nature of the Race game in the further apartment, I
drew nearer to her. "Will you promise to give yourself to nobody else
while I am away, my darling?" Blanche's eyes did promise me through
their tears, and this brief scene, occupying the space of two minutes,
twisted our fates into one on that eventful Christmas-eve.

While I was parting with my poor little Blanche in the library, Vivian
was bidding his mother farewell in her dressing-room. His mother had the
one soft place in his heart, steeled and made skeptical to all others by
that fatal first love of which he had spoken to Cecil. Possibly some of
her son's bitter grief was shown to her on that sad Christmas-eve; at
all events, when he left her dressing-room, he had the tired, haggard
look left by any conflict of passion. As he came down the stairs to come
to the dog-cart that was to take us to the station, the door of
Blanche's boudoir stood open, and in it he saw Cecil. The fierce tide of
his love surged up, subduing all his pride, and he paused to take his
last sight of the face that would haunt him in the long night watches
and the rapid rush of many a charge. She looked up and saw him; that
look overpowered all his calmness and resolve. He turned, and bent
towards her, every feature quivering with the passion she had once
longed to rouse. His hot breath scorched her cheek, and he caught her
fiercely against his heart in an iron embrace, pressing his burning lips
on hers. "God forgive you! I have loved you too well. Women have ever
been fatal to my race!"

He almost threw her from him in the violence of feelings roused after a
long sleep. In another moment he was driving the dog-cart at a mad
gallop past the old church in which we had spent such pleasant hours.
Its clock tolled out twelve strokes as we passed it, and on the quiet
village, and the weird-like trees, and the tall turrets of Deerhurst,
the Christmas morning dawned.

Vivian continued so utterly enfeebled and prostrate that there was but
one chance for him--return homewards. I was going to England with
despatches, and Syd, at his mother's entreaty, let hi