Page:The Confessions of a Well-Meaning Woman.djvu/56

 general was utterly callous towards his staff; but Will “stuck it out”, as he would say. It was the soldier’s part, and Colonel Butler knew as well as I did that it was only the war and the accident of being wounded that had thrown him across Phyllida’s path.

“What do you mean by ‘opportunity’, Lady Ann?,” he asked.

It was not easy to put into words. . . I sometimes feel that romance has gone to the head of some of our girls; first of all, a man had only to be in uniform, then he had only to be wounded. . . I liked Colonel Butler, but in the old days Phyllida would not have looked at him. . . And, goodness me, if you go back a generation, you can imagine what my father would have said if a man, however pleasant, with nothing but his pay and the clothes he stood up in. . . A soldier only by the accident of war. . . And in a regiment one had truly honestly never heard of. ..

“I don’t feel I can help you,” I said. “Times have changed, and my ideas are out of date. My brother may be different; have you spoken to him?”. . . As a matter of fact any woman could have seen that it wasn’t necessary to speak; Brackenbury, all of them were throwing themselves at the young man’s head. That’s why I felt