lliousness, though they did not show themselves in any
direct manner as yet.

The miller, in the meantime, who seldom interfered in such matters, was
observed to look meaningly at Anne and the trumpet-major from day to day;
and by-and-by he spoke privately to John.

His words were short and to the point: Anne was very melancholy; she had
thought too much of Bob. Now 'twas plain that they had lost him for many
years to come. Well; he had always felt that of the two he would rather
John married her. Now John might settle down there, and succeed where
Bob had failed. 'So if you could get her, my sonny, to think less of him
and more of thyself, it would be a good thing for all.'

An inward excitement had risen in John; but he suppressed it and said
firmly--

'Fairness to Bob before everything!'

'He hev forgot her, and there's an end on't.'

'She's not forgot him.'

'Well, well; think it over.'

This discourse was the cause of his penning a letter to his brother. He
begged for a distinct statement whether, as John at first supposed, Bob's
verbal renunciation of Anne on the quay had been only a momentary
ebullition of friendship, which it would be cruel to take literally; or
whether, as seemed now, it had passed from a hasty resolve to a standing
purpose, persevered in for his own pleasure, with not a care for the
result on poor Anne.

John waited anxiously for the answer, but no answer came; and the silence
seemed even more significant than a letter of assurance could have been
of his absolution from further support to a claim which Bob himself had
so clearly renounced. Thus it happened that paternal pressure, brotherly
indifference, and his own released impulse operated in one delightful
direction, and the trumpet-major once more approached Anne as in the old
time.

But it was not till she had been left to herself for a full five months,
and the blue-bells and ragged-robins of the following year were again
making themselves common to the rambling eye, that he directly addressed
her. She was tying up a group of tall flowering plants in the garden:
she knew that he was behind her, but she did not turn. She had subsided
into a placid dignity which enabled her when watched to perform any
little action with seeming composure--very different from the flutter of
her inexperienced days.

'Are you never going to turn round?' he at length asked good-humouredly.

She then did turn, and looked at him for a momen