The eyes of Jane and Philip shot an exchange.

‘Anything you command, madam,’ said Philip.

He looked up and breathed his heaven of fresh air.  Jane pitied, she could not interpose to thwart his act of resignation.  The farmer, home for tea, and a footman, took him between them, crutched, while Mrs. Adister said to Jane:  ’The doctor’s orders are positive:—­if he is to be a man once more, he must rest his back and not use his legs for months.  He was near to being a permanent cripple from that fall.  My brother Edward had one like it in his youth.  Soldiers are desperate creatures.’

‘I think Mr. Adister had his fall when hunting, was it not?’ said Jane.

‘Hunting, my dear.’

That was rather different from a fall on duty before the enemy, incurred by severe exhaustion after sunstroke! . . .

Jane took her leave of Philip beside his couch of imprisonment in his room, promising to return in the early morning.  He embraced her old dog Wayland tenderly.  Hard men have sometimes a warm affection for dogs.

Walking homeward she likewise gave Wayland a hug.  She called him ’dear old fellow,’ and questioned him of his fondness for her, warning him not to be faithless ever to the mistress who loved him.  Was not her old Wayland as good a protector as the footman Mrs. Adister pressed her to have at her heels?  That he was!

Captain Con’s behaviour grieved her.  And it certainly revived an ancient accusation against his countrymen.  If he cared for her so much, why had he not placed confidence in her and commissioned her to speak of his election to his wife?  Irishmen will never be quite sincere!—­But why had his cousin exposed him to one whom he greatly esteemed?  However angry he might be with Con O’Donnell in his disapproval of the captain’s conduct, it was not very considerate to show the poor man to her in his natural colours.  Those words:  ‘The consolidation of the Union:’  sprang up.  She had a dim remembrance of words ensuing:  ’ceremonies going at a funeral pace . . . on the highway to the solidest kind of union:’—­Yes, he wrote:  ‘I leave you to . . .’  And Captain Philip showed her the letter: 

She perceived motives beginning to stir.  He must have had his intention:  and now as to his character!—­Jane was of the order of young women possessing active minds instead of figured paste-board fronts, who see what there is to be seen about them and know what may be known instead of decorously waiting for the astonishment of revelations.  As soon as she had asked herself the nature of the design of so honourable a man as Captain Philip in showing her his cousin’s letter, her blood spun round and round, waving the reply as a torch; and the question of his character confirmed it.