ed of the preparations at
Broadstone, where he had been over the ground with Maurice de Courcy,
and had heard the band.

'What did you think of it? said Philip, absently.

'They _should_ keep better time! Really, Philip, there is one fellow
with a bugle that ought to be flogged every day of his life!' said Guy,
making a droll, excruciated face.

How a few words can change the whole current of ideas. The band was
connected with Philip, therefore he could not bear to hear it found
fault with, and adduced some one's opinion that the man in question was
one of the best of their musicians.

Guy could not help shrugging his shoulders, as he laughed, and
said,--'Then I shall be obliged to take to my heels if I meet the rest.
Good-bye.'

'How conceited they have made that boy about his fine ear,' thought
Philip. 'I wonder he is not ashamed to parade his music, considering
whence it is derived.'

CHAPTER 9

Ah! county Guy, the hour is nigh,
The sun has left the lea,
The orange flower perfumes the bower,
The breeze is on the sea.
The lark, his lay, who thrilled all day,
Sits hushed, his partner nigh,
Breeze, bird, and flower, confess the hour,
But where is county Guy?
--SCOTT

How was it meantime with Laura? The others were laughing and talking
round her, but all seemed lost in the transcendent beam that had shone
out on her. To be told by Philip that she was all to him that he had
always been to her! This one idea pervaded her--too glorious, too happy
for utterance, almost for distinct thought. The softening of his voice,
and the look with which he had regarded her, recurred again and again,
startling her with a sudden surprise of joy almost as at the first
moment. Of the future Laura thought not. Never had a promise of love
been made with less knowledge of what it amounted to: it seemed merely
an expression of sentiments that she had never been without; for had she
not always looked up to Philip more than any other living creature,
and gloried in being his favourite cousin? Ever since the time when
he explained to her the plates in the Encyclopaedia, and made her read
'Joyce's Scientific Dialogues,' when Amy took fright at the first page.
That this might lead further did not occur to her; she was eighteen,
she had no experience, not even in novels, she did not know what she
had done; and above all, she had so leant to surrender