Captain Archdale playing at nurse with private soldiers!  The young man did not fancy the idea at all; he would much rather have led a forlorn hope.

But no forlorn hope offered, and this did.  Of course he would do anything for Mistress Royal, but this was not for her at all.  He had half a mind to excuse himself.  As the suggestion came to him, he looked into the steady eyes that were watching him fathoming his reluctance, ready for approval or for scorning as the answer might be.  His look took in her whole appearance, and set him wondering if the privates, some of whom had been even his neighbors and his boyish playfellows, could offend his dignity more than hers?  He began to wonder how her eyes would change if they looked at him approvingly.

“I will go with pleasure, if you’ll put up with an awkward fellow,” he answered.  And Colonel Vaughan who was looking on was not aware that he had hesitated.

Elizabeth’s eyes darkened.  She smiled and nodded her head slightly, as if to say, “I knew you would do it.”  But after this the trace of a smile lurked for a moment in the corners of her mouth, as if she might have added:  “I know, too, what it has cost you.”  But she said nothing at all to Archdale.  She bade good-by to Colonel Vaughan who protested that he wished he was not upon duty, and turned again toward the hospital.  Suddenly Archdale thought that she might have been asking the same thing of Edmonson when she had been talking with him just before.  If she had, it was very certain that Edmonson had found an engagement immediately.  Upon the whole, Archdale was satisfied to have done what the other would not do.  So that it was just as well he did not know that that other had not been asked.

Was there ever another woman in the world like this one, he asked himself late that night, recalling that she had been for hours beside him, treating him just as if he were a crook to raise a soldier’s head, if she wanted to rearrange his pillow, or a machine to reel off bandages round that poor Melvin’s shattered arm, or to do any other trying service, and never even imagine that he would like to be thanked or treated humanely, while every look and word and thought of hers was for the soldiers.  It was so different from what he had always found, and yet there was the nobleness of self-forgetfulness in the difference.  But for all this vivid memory of those hours, it was imagination rather than recollection that occupied him most with her when she had left him.  For he was picturing how she would look, and what she would say, when she read the letter that he had slipped into her hand as she was going away.  He recalled her look of amazement, her beginning:—­“Why, it’s—­” and then breaking off abruptly, perceiving that only peculiar circumstances could have made him give her Katie’s letter to read, and perhaps divining the truth.  For she had suddenly became very grave and had replied absently to his good-night, as on her father’s she had