“Ah! so it is,” sighed the boy, seriously. “I often feared this,” muttered he, after a pause. “Nelly's letters told me as much, and I said to myself, 'It will be too late.'”
“Then Nelly has told you all, perhaps?” said she.
“Not everything, nor, indeed, anything at all very distinctly. I could only make out what seemed to be her own impressions, for they appeared mere surmises.”
“And of what sort were they?” asked Kate, curiously.
“Just what you would suspect from her. Everlasting fears about temptations and trials, and so forth, continually praying that your heart might resist all the flatteries about you. The old story about humility. I thought to myself, 'If the lesson be not more needful to Kate than to me, she runs no great risk, after all!' for I was also warned about the seductions of the world! a poor cadet, with a few kreutzers a day, told not to be a Sybarite! Returning wet through from a five hours' patrol, to burnish accoutrements in a cold, damp barrack, and then exhorted against the contamination of low society, when all around me were cursing the hardships they lived in, and execrating the slavery of the service!”
“Our dearest Nelly knows so little of the world,” said Kate, as she threw a passing glance at herself in the mirror, and arranged the fall of a deep fringe of gold lace which was fastened in her hair.
“She knows nothing of it,” said the boy, adjusting his sword-knot. “She thought our hussars wore white dolmans, and carried straight swords like the cuirassiers.”
“And the dear, simple creature asked me, in one of her letters, if I ever wore wild-flowers in my hair now, as I used to do long ago,” said Kate, stealing another glance at the glass. “Flowers are pretty things in the head when rubies make the pinks, and the dewdrops are all diamonds.”
Frank looked at her as she said this, and for the first time saw the proud elation her features assumed when excited by a theme of vanity.
“You are greatly changed, dearest Kate,” said he, thoughtfully.