He laughed rather bitterly as he retraced his steps.  It was scarcely worth the cold, companionless walk, or the pains he had taken to evade the rest.

Why should he risk offending his uncle to please her?  If that, indeed, were all, he did not know that he should.  But new considerations came in.  We were on the eve of drifting into the Crimean War; the papers were getting more and more threatening; and, in the event of hostilities being declared, he had applied for a ship on active service.

Could he, then, when he might never return, leave Bluebell with their marriage unacknowledged?  “Though,” thought he, in his moody reverie, “if that were all right, I don’t believe she would care a pin if I were knocked over by a round shot.”

Some curiosity and a good deal of chaff greeted Dutton on his return; but Kate did not fail to remark how little he entered into, and how quickly turned it off.  That cousin Harry had some mystery of his own, the astute damsel was pretty well convinced, though to the rest he appeared light-hearted and hilarious, and enjoying to the full his enviable position.

“What a lucky young fellow that is?” had been remarked at different times by nearly every guest in the house.  And the days slipped by, Harry very much “made of” by Lady Calvert, while Lady Geraldine’s preference was of an unobtrusive and reticent nature—­impalpable, yet grateful to the senses as the fragrance of an invisible, leaf-hidden violet.

And Bluebell, all alone in her retreat, and each day passing without tidings, began to think she had over-estimated Harry’s once troublesome adoration, and almost to doubt if he would ever return.

In truth, he was ashamed to write.  The longer the confession was deferred, the harder it became; and he had now assigned himself a date.  On receiving sailing orders to the Baltic, he would tell all, and make it, perhaps, a last request to his uncle to acknowledge his wife.  In the mean time why plague himself about it?  Things must take their course.

They were sitting one day in a pretty breakfast-room.  Kate rather angry with her Colonel, who lingered on, always apparently at boiling point, yet never so far bubbling over as to commit himself in words.  Harry, too, was looking actually interested in Geraldine, whose large, honest eyes were beaming with a sort of tender happiness.  Lord Bromley was not in the room.  Clearly he must be detached.

“Doesn’t this dear old room remind you of childish days?” cried the artless damsel.  “It used always to be summer or Christmas then; and we had tea here in such beautiful china, so different from the horrid school-room crockery.”

“And sometimes we were so long over it, they couldn’t clear away before the company passed through to dinner, and we got under the table to watch them,” said Harry.

“And we used to put out the little sofas and jump over them, King Charles’s beauties looking down on us from the wall so grand and gracious.  And there was always mignonette and nemophila in window-boxes, so sweet in the evening air?  And the honey?  Oh, Harry, do you remember the honey?”