CHAPTER XVI. "Heaven first taught letters for some wretch's aid." POPE. BUT to return again! Yes, the strangely coupled faces of Harriet and Eugenia were destined to return again. These beings, unknown each to the other, so widely sundered each from the other, had more than once come hand in hand to Hardy's thoughts, and now they present themselves even more distinctly than before. Many months have passed; he has been treading and re-treading his busy routine course, undisturbed by any wandering fancies, when there arrives from Gordon a long letter -it is almost a volume. From Gordon's name having been mentioned long ago in one of Miss Aveley's letters to his uncle, he is assured that hers will be found in his friend's pages. Before reading he runs his eye up and down them in search of it, impelled by some indefinable feeling. It is there-and there. But see! the paper trembles in his hand-he has caught another name-that of Eugenia Fanshawe. How comes it there? What does Gordon know of her? Why Harriet and Eugenia together in this letter to him? His startled conscience whispers him that he is condemned-that by some caprice of fate Gordon has plucked out the heart of his mystery. Read then, Hardy, read and straight on, as children say in their tales. First, there is a soldier's pride in having to tell of real war. There is no weak com plaining of the fatigues of the march, or of the anxieties attendant on battle; there is no vulgar exultation in victory. After victory there was the return to the camp where the wounded colonel lay. Then Gordon told of his having been his nurse, and of his being permitted to resume only the more arduous duties of that office-for the lighter ones there was a gentler hand, that of his niece. "By the bye, Hardy, an acquaintance of yours," he added. Did Gordon write that careless phrase about Miss Aveley? Yes. It seemed to him the best means of introducing her name, and giving the impression that, not being interested in her, he might pass on without any discussion of her merits. It is singular that he did not feel at all disposed to upbraid Hardy for not being in love with her, as he had once felt when making an imaginary, a nameless portrait of her. The subject of both the young men's thoughts thus abruptly presented and dismissed, Gordon went on with his own history and his reflections. There was a great deal about the war. Its dishonourable cause was commented on in no measured terms, and the rajah's fate was told with honest pity; and here, with another by the bye, came in the name of poor Eugenia. "But speaking of what is dishonourable, let me turn from public acts to something private of that sort. Sir Walcot Downes, of whom you must have heard, for his estate is near your village, was killed in our last attack. You must know that all our officers were aware that he had lately been a suitor for Miss Aveley's hand. Judge what his sense of honour was, when I tell you that, at the point of death, he made a declaration to me which shews that he knew at that time he had a wife and child living in the West Indies! I called in a gentleman to hear his dying words, that he might bear his testimony to them as well as I. We |