Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 126.djvu/569

Rh evening for the march. Now it was made in the full glare of a May sun at mid-day. And as he rode along in the rear of the detachment, and to windward of it to keep out of the dust made by the men's feet, it came upon him suddenly that he had been untrue to the memory of his love. During the last ten days his thoughts had scarcely once been occupied with the past; was this, he thought bitterly, to be the end of the great passion he had been hugging to his breast, and was it fear or excitement that had deadened his senses? But now, as he drew near the house, his old feelings came up again. Yet no! not the same feelings. To cherish a common sort of love for the woman who could now never be his, would, he felt, be desecration. She must now be, it seemed to him, as a saint to be worshipped rather than a woman to be loved, and his heart bounded at the thought that he might now have the opportunity of proving his devotion in a way that could give no offence to the purest mind. Yet he did not even know if she were still at the residency, or whether she had been sent away with the other ladies to a place of safety in the hills.

The detachment marched into the residency enclosure, and halted in the same place where Yorke had encamped before — the very spot of which, only three months ago, Olivia had made the pretty sketch, and when Yorke, standing by her while she plied her brush, had bewailed the monotony of military life, audits want of reality. No want of reality now, at any rate, and the only monotony that of suspense. Letting the detachment pile arms and break off, to take shelter under the trees which skirted the park wall, Yorke walked across the grounds to the house, under the portico of which divers scarlet-coated attendants were lounging as usual, and followed the man who went forward to announce him into the house. As he entered the large drawing-room, Mrs. Falkland came out of a side room and advanced to meet him. It was just here that they parted the last time he saw her, when he went off, credulous young fool, burning with love and elate with hope, to be crushed to the earth presently with shame and despair. But three short months had passed, and now hope and love had been crushed together — and yet not love. Yorke felt in his heart that his love for the beautiful woman before him was as deep as ever; but he felt also with honest pride that it was love of a different kind; that for the future devotion must be given without acknowledgment or return; and, mingled with his anxiety at seeing her thus exposed to the threatening danger, was a feeling of elation that he might be near to share, perhaps even to shield her from it.

As Olivia came forward, Yorke noticed that she looked paler, and the rich colour and tasteful ornaments in which she had been wont to attire herself were replaced by a simple white muslin dress trimmed with a little blue ribbon, in keeping with the weather, but which made her, he thought, look taller and thinner. But he thought her also lovelier than ever.

Olivia blushed slightly, as she came forward and held out her hand. Did she at all guess what wild work she had made with his poor heart? "You have come with the troops, I suppose?" she said; "my husband is very anxious to see you; will you step into his room?" And she led the way to Colonel Falkland's office.

Falkland was writing at a table in his shirt-sleeves, for the heat was intense, and the punkah was not at work. Hot though it was, Yorke thought he would never have sat down in that guise before Mrs. Falkland, if she had been his wife. The colonel held out his hand to greet him, but without rising. He wanted Yorke and his detachment, he said, to strengthen the residency guard. The greater part of the treasure had been sent into cantonments for the use of the field force about to march, but there were still about three lakhs of rupees — a considerable temptation to the roughs in the city, who were quite ready to rise on the smallest provocation, but would keep quiet so long as the troops on guard remained stanch, which they would probably do, so long as the main body at headquarters stuck by their colours. What did Yorke think about his own regiment?

Yorke said that they were well-conducted and steady enough so far, but he could not help admitting that a change had come over the manner of the sepoys, as in men who knew they were suspected, and deserved to be, after the treachery displayed at other places. Still, foolish though it might be, he could not help believing that they would prove an exception to the wholesale treachery everywhere manifested.

"Well, everything depends on General Slough; he has been sent down to take