“She is one!” said Sabina; “a heroine, and a martyr too.”

“If I could,—­that was what I was going to say,—­if I could but win that woman’s respect—­as I live, I ask no more; only to be sure she didn’t despise me.  I’d do—­I don’t know what I wouldn’t do.  I’d—­I’d study the art of war:  I know there are books about it.  I’d get out to the East, away from this depot work; and if there is no fighting there, as every one says there will not be, I’d go into a marching regiment, and see service.  I’d,—­hang it, if they’d have me,—­I’d even go to the senior department at Sandhurst, and read mathematics!”

Sabina kept her countenance (though with difficulty) at this magnificent bathos; for she saw that the little man was really in earnest; and that the looks and words of the strange actress had awakened in him something far deeper and nobler than the mere sensual passion of a boy.

“Ah, if I had but gone out to Varna with the rest!  I thought myself a lucky fellow to be left here.”

“Do you know that it is getting very late?”

So Frederick Lord Scoutbush went home to his rooms:  and there sat for three hours and more with his feet on the fender, rejecting the entreaties of Mr. Bowie, his servant, either to have something, or to go to bed; yea, he forgot even to smoke, by which Mr. Bowie “jaloused” that he was hit very hard indeed:  but made no remark, being a Scotchman, and of a cautious temperament.

However, from that night Scoutbush was a changed man, and tried to be so.  He read of nothing but sieges and stockades, brigade evolutions, and conical bullets; he drilled his men till he was an abomination in their eyes, and a weariness to their flesh; only every evening he went to the theatre, watched La Cordifiamma with a heavy heart, and then went home to bed; for the little man had good sense enough to ask Sabina for no more interviews with her.  So in all things he acquitted himself as a model officer, and excited the admiration and respect of Serjeant Major MacArthur, who began fishing at Bowie to discover the cause of this strange metamorphosis in the rackety little Irishman.

“Your master seems to be qualifying himself for the adjutant’s post, Mr. Bowie.  I’m jalousing he’s fired with martial ardour since the war broke out.”

To which Bowie, being a brother Scot, answered Scottice, by a crafty paralogism.

“I’ve always held it as my opeeeenion, that his lordship is a youth of very good parts, if he was only compelled to employ them.”

CHAPTER VIII.

TAKING ROOT.

Whosoever enjoys the sight of an honest man doing his work well, would have enjoyed the sight of Tom Thurnall for the next two months.  In-doors all the morning, and out of doors all the afternoon, was that shrewd and good-natured visage, calling up an answering smile on every face, and leaving every heart a little lighter than he found it.  Puzzling enough it was, alike to Heale and to Headley, how Tom contrived, as if by magic, to gain every one’s good word—­their own included.  For Frank, in spite of Tom’s questionable opinions, had already made all but a confidant of the Doctor; and Heale, in spite of envy and suspicion, could not deny that the young man was a very valuable young man, if he wasn’t given so much to those new-fangled notions of the profession.