t delight. His corps was, then, certain
to be in it, and he would go into action with Lascelles and all his old
friends, instead of exchanging into a strange regiment, as he had
determined to do if his own were not for service.

With all this other thoughts were associated. Somehow he had never looked
upon his rupture with Cecil Rolleston as final, having pretty well
fathomed the _motif_ of her renunciation of him, which he considered
would bear explanation when occasion offered; but now, rather sadly
reviewing the past, he said to himself that, after all, it was well for
her they had not married.

I do not know that Cecil would have been of the same opinion. She had a
brave spirit, that could bear up against known evils, but fretted and
suffered in suspense. She was much altered since her illness. Once the
most attentive and docile of daughters, she became irritable and
uncertain in temper-_difficile_, as the French call it, or, according to
a Scotch expression, "There was no doing with her" some days; and Mrs.
Rolleston, unhappy about both Cecil and Bertie, looked upon her husband's
prejudice against the latter as the cause of all this unsatisfactory
state of things.

As to Colonel Rolleston, he was in the condition of a man whose "foes are
those of his own household." No one appreciated more the "pillow of a
woman's mind"; but really now the pillow might have been stuffed with
stones, so many corners and angularities had developed themselves in his
feminalities.

The regiment had been ordered to Quebec almost immediately after Bluebell
had gone to England; and, as Mrs. Rolleston there heard of Evelyn
Leighton's death, the fate of their _protegee_ became naturally a subject
of anxious speculation. Yet not a line had been received from her; and,
after a time, the subject was avoided, for all felt that Bluebell had
been ungrateful.

Then Mrs. Leighton wrote out the strange story of her elopement, and
having since entered a family as governess in her maiden name. Mrs.
Rolleston was painfully shocked; for, coupling it with the girl's
silence, she could not but imagine the worst, especially when, as they
gazed at each other in mute dismay, she read in Cecil's face a suspicion
that Bertie had had some hand in her disappearance, he had not written
either; but, unless he were in correspondence with Bluebell, could not
have been aware that she was in England. Of course, therefore, it was
only the wildest conjecture. Yet