lf down at the table,
and laid his head upon his hands, stupefied with delight, till Bowie
entered.

"The car, sir."

"Which? Who?" asked Frank, looking up as from a dream.

"The car, sir."

Frank rose, and walked downstairs abstractedly. Bowie kept close to his
side.

"Ye'll pardon me, sir," said he in a low voice; "but I see how it is,--
the more blessing for you. Ye'll be pleased, I trust, to take more care
of this jewel than others have of that one: or--"

"Or you'll shoot me yourself, Bowie?" said Frank, half amused, half
awed, too, by the stern tone of the guardsman. "I'll give you leave to
do it if I deserve it"

"It's no my duty, either as a soldier or as a valet. And, indeed, I've
that opeenion of you, sir, that I don't think it'll need to be any one's
else's duty either."

And so did Mr. Bowie signify his approbation of the new family romance,
and went off to assist Mrs. Clara in getting the trunks down stairs.

Clara was in high dudgeon. She had not yet completed her flirtation with
Mr. Bowie, and felt it hard to have her one amusement in life snatched
out of her hard-worked hands.

"I'm sure I don't know why we're moving. I don't believe it's business.
Some of his tantrums, I daresay. I heard her walking up and down the
room all last night, I'll swear. Neither she nor Miss Valencia have been
to bed. He'll kill her at last, the brute!"

"It's no concern of either of us, that. Have ye got another trunk to
bring down?"

"No concern? Just like your hard-heartedness, Mr. Bowie. And as soon as
I'm gone, of course you will be flirting with these impudent Welshwomen,
in their horrid hats."

"Maybe, yes; maybe, no. But flirting's no marrying, Mrs. Clara."

"True for you, sir! Men were deceivers ever," quoth Clara, and flounced
up stairs; while Bowie looked after her with a grim smile, and caught
her, when she came down again, long enough to give her a great kiss; the
only language which he used in wooing, and that but rarely.

"Dinna fash, lassie. Mind your lady and the poor bairns like a godly
handmaiden, and I'll buy the ring when the sawmon fishing's over, and
we'll just be married ere I start for the Crimee"

"The sawmon!" cried Clara. "I'll see you turned into a mermaid first,
and married to a sawmon!"

"And ye won't do anything o' the kind," said Bowie to himself, and
shouldered a valise.

In ten minutes the ladies were packed into the carriage, and away, under
Mellot's care. Frank watc