hful smile, and shook her head. 'That
summer,' she went on, 'you asked me ten times if you asked me once. I am
older now; much more of a woman, you know; and my opinion is changed
about some people; especially about one.'

'O Anne, Anne!' he burst out as, racked between honour and desire, he
snatched up her hand. The next moment it fell heavily to her lap. He
had absolutely relinquished it half-way to his lips.

'I have been thinking lately,' he said, with preternaturally sudden
calmness, 'that men of the military profession ought not to m--ought to
be like St. Paul, I mean.'

'Fie, John; pretending religion!' she said sternly. 'It isn't that at
all. _It's Bob_!'

'Yes!' cried the miserable trumpet-major. 'I have had a letter from him
to-day.' He pulled out a sheet of paper from his breast. 'That's it!
He's promoted--he's a lieutenant, and appointed to a sloop that only
cruises on our own coast, so that he'll be at home on leave half his
time--he'll be a gentleman some day, and worthy of you!'

He threw the letter into her lap, and drew back to the other side of the
gable-wall. Anne jumped up from her seat, flung away the letter without
looking at it, and went hastily on. John did not attempt to overtake
her. Picking up the letter, he followed in her wake at a distance of a
hundred yards.

But, though Anne had withdrawn from his presence thus precipitately, she
never thought more highly of him in her life than she did five minutes
afterwards, when the excitement of the moment had passed. She saw it all
quite clearly; and his self-sacrifice impressed her so much that the
effect was just the reverse of what he had been aiming to produce. The
more he pleaded for Bob, the more her perverse generosity pleaded for
John. To-day the crisis had come--with what results she had not
foreseen.

As soon as the trumpet-major reached the nearest pen-and-ink he flung
himself into a seat and wrote wildly to Bob:--

'DEAR ROBERT,--I write these few lines to let you know that if you
want Anne Garland you must come at once--you must come instantly, and
post-haste--_or she will be gone_! Somebody else wants her, and she
wants him! It is your last chance, in the opinion of--

'Your faithful brother and well-wisher,
'JOHN.

'P.S.--Glad to hear of your promotion. Tell me the day and I'll meet
the coach.'

XXXIX. BOB LOVEDAY STRUTS UP AND DOWN

One night, about a week later, two m