“Well, I think you would have had to do so somehow, my dear, but that is not the question now. My plan was that when you had succeeded in doing this you should marry him and go home with him.”
“But why, Doctor,” she asked, coloring even more hotly than before, “is the plan changed?”
“Because, my dear, I don't think Bathurst will go home with you.”
“Why not, Doctor?” she asked, in surprise.
“Because, my dear, he will want, in the first place, to rehabilitate himself.”
“But no one knows, Doctor, about the siege and what happened there, except you and me and Mr. Wilson; all the rest have gone.”
“That is true, my dear, but he will want to rehabilitate himself in his own eyes; and besides, that former affair which first set you against him, might crop up at any time. Other civilians, many of them, have volunteered in the service, and no man of courage would like to go away as long as things are in their present state. You will see Bathurst will stay.”
Isobel was silent.
“I think he will be right,” she said at last gravely; “if he wishes to do so, I should not try to dissuade him; it would be very hard to know that he is in danger, but no harder for me than for others.”
“That is right, my dear,” the Doctor said affectionately; “I should not wish my little girl—and now the Major has gone I feel that you are my little girl—to think otherwise. I think,” he went on, smiling, “that the first part of that plan we spoke of will not be as difficult as I fancied it would be; the sting has gone, and he will get rid of his morbid fancies.”