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"In the motor?" Noel's eyes shone. "I'll go, too. You needn't bother about Cinders. He always turns up sooner or later. Don't tell Chris, or she'll spend the rest of the day hunting for him." "She will probably want to know," observed Mordaunt. "I shall say I never had him," said Noel unconcernedly.
Several of the more venturesome lads pleaded their right to take part in the dangerous service, claiming that they should not be left at home when it was possible to make names for themselves among men; but to all these entreaties Sergeant Corney made but one reply. "It was Colonel Campbell himself who mentioned Noel's name, an' of a surety he has the right to say who shall go or stay.
And then, what with dropping a little of the toffee into the water to see if it was ready, and pouring some on a plate that wasn't buttered and not being able to get it off again when it was cold without breaking the plate, and the warm row there was about its being one of the best dinner-service ones, the wild romances of Noël's poetical intellect went out of our heads altogether; and it was not till later, and when deep in the waters of affliction, that they were brought back to us.
Exhausted, worn out, spent with sorrow, Christine retired at once to her room, and went wearily to bed, wondering what the next day would bring. She soon fell into a deep sleep, and slept heavily till morning, waking with a confused mingling of memory and expectancy in which joy and pain were inseparably united. Noel's note came early.
Her death, M. Tabaret, has annihilated all my dreams of the future, and probably overthrown my most cherished hopes. I had to avenge myself for cruel injuries; her death breaks the weapon in my hands, and reduces me to despair, to impotence. Alas! I am indeed unfortunate." "You unfortunate?" cried old Tabaret, singularly affected by his dear Noel's sadness.
"He wasn't a very suitable parti for her, my dear fellow. There was a certain episode in his past that wouldn't bear too close an investigation. Very possibly you have not been let into that secret. Your brother was not over-anxious to have it noised abroad." Noel's hands were clenched. He seemed to be restraining himself from a violent outburst with immense difficulty.
"Yes, but you can say the rest," argued Noel, with the feeling that he was losing ground every instant. "What do you generally say next?" "No, I can't. It wouldn't be sayin' them properly, and God doesn't listen if you don't say them properly." Here was a formidable difficulty; but Noel's brain was fertile. He had a sudden inspiration. "Look here!" he said.
The two months of their married life had but served to teach him this somewhat bitter lesson, and he determined then and there to win her back as he had won her at the outset, to make her his once more and to keep her so for ever. "I am going to take you away, Chris," he said. "You are wanting a change. Noel's holidays will be over next week. We will start then."
He said he thought we should not find the bandit business a paying industry, as a permanency, and that journalism might be. We had sold Noel's poetry and that piece of information about Lord Tottenham to the good editor, so we thought it would not be a bad idea to have a newspaper of our own.
"George, let the goat loose, just for to-night, to please me." Something in that voice, and in the gesture of her stretched-out arm moved George in a queer way, although, as Pierson had once said, he had no music in his soul. He loosed the goat. In the weeks which succeeded Pierson's departure, Gratian and George often discussed Noel's conduct and position by the light of the Pragmatic theory.
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