“Well if you know all about it, that’s another thing.  I trust she doesn’t put nonsense in the children’s heads.  Emma is getting very forward and inquisitive.”

His wife felt secretly excited, for she was sure this letter must be from the errant husband, especially as the governess would not read it in public, but pocketed it with a slight nervousness of manner.

Time passed on, and Mrs. Markham had discovered nothing.

Bluebell, in her diligent revision of the papers, found much of personal interest.  Colonel Rolleston’s regiment had been ordered home to proceed to the Crimea, and she well knew the anxiety his family must be enduring.

It seemed cold and ungrateful to be unable to write one word of sympathy to Mrs. Rolleston, but any renewal of intercourse must lead to explanations, and it was her cruel fate to be able to give none.  One other name, too, she saw in the public print that ought no longer to have had the power to thrill her as it did.  Well, it was not so long ago, after all:  but, however mentally disquieted we leave our heroine, as she has now drifted, outwardly, into a peaceful haven, we must return to others in the narrative who have more to do.

CHAPTER XXXVI.

IN DEATH THEY WERE NOT DIVIDED.

  My love he stood at my right hand,
    His eyes were grave and sweet;
  Methought he said, “In this far land,
    Oh, is it thus we meet! 
  Ah, maid most dear, I am not here,
    I have no place—­no part
  No dwelling more by sea or shore,
    But only in thine heart!”
                         —­Jean Ingelow.

Bertie Du Meresq, after lingering a while in London, without any tidings of Cecil, began to weary of inaction, and turn his thoughts again to Australia.  But just then warlike rumours were becoming rife, and forced his mind into another channel.  Good heavens! with such a prospect, possibility even, how could he let his papers be sent in?  There was just time to recall them.  He rushed to the Horse Guards, despatched a letter to his Colonel, and his retirement, not having yet been gazetted, was cancelled.

But how appease the injured Green, who had advanced the over regulation money for the troop?  That must be returned, however expensive it might be to raise the necessary sum.  One possible resource remained.  He possessed a maiden aunt—­of means, whose patience and purse he had completely exhausted some years ago; added to which she had become “serious,” and a gentleman of the Stiggens order now diverted her spare cash into the coffers of little Bethlehem.

Du Meresq was aware that he had been predestined to doom by the Rev. Mr. Jackson, and that his aunt had been assured she could not touch pitch without being defiled.  “Nevertheless,” he thought, “I must try and carry her by a coup de main, if I have to pitch her clerical friend out of the window first.”