"It is eight whole months since I had the pleasure of seeing you last, Miss Darnel," said he, after a rather awkward pause.
"Exceeding sadness, and much mortification," said he.
"I was but a little girl when papa died, yet I can remember what a wrench it was. In losing your father--"
She looked up at him inquiringly; could he tell her all he had lost--his heritage--his grand old baronial home, a princely estate--even honour itself, for thus, in his over-sensitiveness, did Roland view the matter of the long-hidden will!
"If matters remain quiet here among the colonists, Miss Darnell, I mean to leave the regiment."
"Leave the Scots Royals--the Royal Regiment!" she exclaimed with surprise; "I thought it was the second home of your family; I have often heard you say so."
"For reasons that I cannot tell--even to you."
"Ah, pardon me; but what do you mean to do?"
"In India!" she exclaimed, with a depth of interest that made Roland's heart beat wildly; "oh, how far, far away!"
"Far away from you;--oh, Miss Darnel--Aurelia!" His heart was rushing to his head.
At that moment a visitor, Colonel Smash, of U.S. army, was announced, and Roland withdrew, leaving unsaid all that he ought to have said--that she expected him to say, and what he would have said, but for the secret of that accursed cabinet of Scindia.
Could she have looked into his heart and read his thoughts, through the window which Vulcan wished had been placed in every human breast!
Both Aurelia and Madame Darnel had a right to expect something more to develop itself from the visit of Roland; but he felt himself a very craven, and retired, leaving her with the most absurd of her many admirers, Colonel Ithurial Smash, a long-legged, hard-featured, and most ungainly New Yorker, whose rivalry was too contemptible for Roland's consideration, though he did marvel whether one could "possibly parade a fellow," for interrupting one's conversation with his cousin--for in this degree of relationship the "Colonel" somehow stood to Aurelia Darnel.
After this, many days elapsed, and Roland, having ever before him the last crushing communication of Messrs. Hook and Crook, never went near the Chateau de St. Eustache, much to the surprise of Logan, whose mind was sorely exercised on that subject, and on some new and unwonted peculiarities of temper and system which he discovered in his old friend and once jolly comrade.