Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 126.djvu/421

Rh , I know. It does seem a dreadful thing for the poor fellow to be cast off even by his friends in his troubles."

Falkland looked with surprise at the fair speaker, as she waited anxiously for his answer, for he did not know till then that she had thought at all about the matter. Then he said gravely, but with a kind smile —

"Your cousin has been very careless, no doubt, and there have been irregularities in this business which ought not to have occurred, and which no doubt bear a very unfavourable appearance; but I should think much worse of human nature than I do if I could believe that so gallant a soldier as Rupert Kirke were guilty of anything positively dishonourable."

"Oh, thank you for saying that!" cried Olivia, with fervour. "But why is it that he cannot get justice, poor fellow? Is there no way in which he can set himself right with the world?"

"A very sensible question, my dear, although you know nothing about the matter," observed her father, lighting his cigar, which a servant had just brought, and looking up at the ceiling as he leaned back in his chair. "Yes, he had the means of clearing himself, no doubt, by demanding a court-martial. If he was so highly honourable a man, and had nothing to fear from publicity, why did he not insist upon one being held upon him?"

"It was a grave error of judgment, no doubt," observed Falkland, slowly; "he should not have left the decision in the matter to the government; but having once made the mistake, it was perhaps too late to rectify it."

"Well," said the commissioner, rising from the table, "I am very glad that Olivia should have some grounds for taking a more charitable view of the matter than I am able to do, and I am quite willing both you and she should think I am unreasonably hard about it;" and so saying he went to his own room, adding to himself — "but I believe I know a good deal more about some points of the affair than even you do, Falkland."

"I am just going down to the cantonments," said Falkland to Olivia, when they were left alone, "and shall see your cousin this morning. In fact I am going there on purpose to see him. Shall I give him any message from you if he asks after you?"

"Thank you," she replied, warmly; "please say how heartily I grieve about this. But, no" she continued, correcting herself, "it would hardly be proper to send him messages while papa's house is closed against him, would it?" and she looked up in his face asking for a reply.

"You are right, Olivia, in this as in everything; but I may at least say for you that he has your full sympathy in his troubles."

"Oh yes, please say all that, and my heartfelt wishes for happier days for him, poor fellow!" The love that might have been had now turned all to pity.

"She has grace and beauty enough to furnish twenty women," said the colonel to himself, as he stepped into his carriage, "and withal is as guileless and simple as a child."

"I have seen Kirke to day," said Falkland in the evening, as the occupants of the residency were strolling in the garden, "and his Excellency gave him an interview, at which I was present. I am sorry to say the result was not satisfactory. The former holds out no prospect of reinstating him. Kirke returns tonight to his own station." No more passed on the subject.

This was the beginning of Falkland's brief and successful courtship. When, shortly after Olivia's arrival, he came to pay a promised visit of greeting to his godchild, his feelings were merely those of kindly interest, and curiosity to see how far she might have fulfilled the promise of her young girlhood. She, for her part, had merely an uncertain recollection of a person associated in her mind with middle age, whom she knew to be kind and good, and on whose friendship her father set a high value. Middle-aged he was, but the difference between them seemed no longer what it was when the slight girl in the broad-brimmed straw hat had led the grave soldier over the picture-galleries of Florence. Falkland was still grave and somewhat taciturn, although not without humour, but there was nothing of the old man about him. Erect, active, and soldier-like in habit, spare in diet, a student of books, and yet a busy public man, he had outlived the egotism of youth without acquiring the hardness of age, while his unselfishness and sympathy for others rendered his society fascinating alike to old and young. With natives he was as popular as with Europeans. His servants plundered him freely after the fashion of their kind, and would have followed him to death. Young men sought his advice in trouble. Children