“You will come with me, Grace,” said Fanny, rising.  “I dare say you had rather not, Rachel, and it would be a pity to disturb you, Alick.”

“Thank you; it would be decidedly more than my duty.”

“I am quite sorry to go, you are so amusing,” said Fanny, “but I suppose you will have settled about heroism by the time we come out again, and will tell me what the boys ought to play at.”

Rachel’s age was quite past the need of troubling herself at being left tete-a-tete with a mere lad like this; and, besides, it was an opportunity not to be neglected of giving a young carpet knight a lesson in true heroism.  There was a pause after the other two had moved off.  Rachel reflected for a few moments, and then, precipitated by the fear of her audience falling asleep, she exclaimed—­

“No words have been more basely misused than hero and heroine.  The one is the mere fighting animal whose strength or fortune have borne him through some more than ordinary danger, the other is only the subject of an adventure, perfectly irrespective of her conduct in it.”

“Bathos attends all high words,” he said, as she paused, chiefly to see whether he was awake, and not like her dumb playfellow of old.

“This is not their natural bathos but their misuse.  They ought to be reserved for those who in any department have passed the limits to which the necessity of their position constrained them, and done acts of self-devotion for the good of others.  I will give you an instance, and from your own profession, that you may see I am not prejudiced, besides, the hero of it is past praise or blame.”

Encouraged by seeing a little more of his eyes, she went on.  “It was in the course of the siege of Delhi, a shell came into a tent where some sick and wounded were lying.  There was one young officer among them who could move enough to have had a chance of escaping the explosion, but instead of that he took the shell up, its fuse burning as it was, and ran with it out of the tent, then hurled it to a distance.  It exploded, and of course was his death, but the rest were saved, and I call that a deed of heroism far greater than mounting a breach or leading a forlorn hope.”

“Killed, you say?” inquired Mr. Keith, still in the same lethargic manner.

“Oh yes, mortally wounded:  carried back to die among the men he had saved.”

“Jessie Cameron singing his dirge,” mumbled this provoking individual, with something about the form of his cheek that being taken by Rachel for a derisive smile, made her exclaim vehemently, “You do not mean to undervalue an action like that in comparison with mere animal pugnacity in an advance.”

“More than one’s duty was your test,” he said.

“And was not this more than duty?  Ah!  I see yours is a spirit of depreciation, and I can only say I pity you.”