“Why, sir,” said Gabriel, laughing, “they say in the regiment that you know well-nigh every family in England--perchance this lady is my grand-dame who lives at Notting hill Manor, some two miles from Tyburn by the Oxford road.”
“Upon my soul, that’s a strange coincidence,” said the Major. “But I had no notion she was of a Herefordshire family. She was a very kind friend to my late wife in London before our marriage, and stood sponsor for Helena. I thought of writing to ask her to advise some safe lodging in the city where my daughter may be sent in charge of Mistress Malvina.”
“If you will trust me with your letter, I will bear it to Madam Harford and bring you back her reply, sir,” said Joscelyn Heyworth; and he smiled to himself, thinking that fate was about to help his match making.
However, it was not his doing, but the Major’s own arrangement which, during the course of the next few days, threw Gabriel and little Mistress Nell into frequent intercourse. The girl lived through a midsummer dream of happiness, but Gabriel, though liking very much to talk to one who was both pretty and winsome, never said a word to her that might not have been proclaimed from the housetops, and never felt his pulses beat the faster when the innocent blue eyes were lifted to his.
Marriage arrangements were most matter-of-fact in those days and the Major, before leaving Gloucester, thought it as well to broach the subject with his daughter.
“Child,” he said one evening, when they were alone together in a gloomy little parlour at Alderman Pury’s house, “it may be long ere I see you again, for, as you know, we march into the West to-morrow. I have had no proposal for your hand save that from Squire Norton, which I was bound to decline. But if at any time it should chance that I might arrange a marriage for you with Lieutenant Harford, would he meet with your approval?”
“Yes, sir,” said little Mistress Nell, blushing.
“He is a man I would very gladly entrust you to” said the Major. “Yet think not over much of it, Nell, for the notion may come to nothing. I merely wished to know that such a plan would not be uncongenial to you.”
“Oh, no, sir,” faltered Helena, “not uncongenial.”
And then she fell awondering whether it must ever be a choice between the fierce passion which terrified her in Squire Norton’s eyes, and the easy friendliness which somehow scarcely satisfied her in Gabriel’s expression. Was there, perchance, some happy mean betwixt these two, a love which had not yet come her way? If only her gallant rescuer would give her the supreme happiness of requiting in some way his service to her! She half wished herself a man that she might serve under him, and perhaps do for him on the battlefield what Captain Heyworth had done at Edgehill. And so she dreamt her innocent dreams, never knowing of the miniature that hung about Gabriel’s neck, or imagining that at Hereford a pair of dark grey eyes were shedding tears more bitter than any that could ever be shed by her.