The two men were scarcely twenty feet apart, they could have assisted each other considerably in their respective objects, they were thinking at the same moment of the same person, yet for all practical purposes they might as well have been in different counties.
Frank was not asleep—far from it; neither was he reading, though wrapped in a train of thought produced by a novel he had been perusing with unusual avidity and attention. His duties at the barracks had detained him all the previous evening, and catching the last train, not without difficulty, he succeeded in spending his Sunday in London, to find himself with nothing to do when he got there. Truth to tell, Frank was unsettled and unlike himself. He breakfasted without appetite at his cheerful little bachelor lodgings, which were always kept ready, even when the regiment was in London, and in which he slept perhaps half a dozen times in a month. He dressed in unseemly haste, he sallied out tumultuously, with no definite object, and took refuge at last in the library of the Cauliflower, from sheer weariness of body and vacuity of mind. He was so unaccustomed to weigh matters seriously, as affecting the course of a whole lifetime, so unused to reflection on anything less obvious than the front of a squadron or the speed of a horse, that he felt really oppressed by the great argument going on in his own mind, as to whether he could, or could not, struggle through existence without asking Miss Hallaton to be his wife.
Young gentlemen of the present day are not an uxorious race, and Frank was like his fellows. He appreciated, nobody more, the liberty of a single man, and had imbibed from his elders, by precept, example, and warning, a certain dread of restraints and monotony that must accompany married life. But then, to sit opposite such a woman as Helen every morning at breakfast, to have her all to himself, without scheming for invitations, and watching for carriages; without necessity for being civil to a chaperon, or making up to a father, why it seemed a heaven upon earth, to attain which he would—yes, hang him if he wouldn't—give up even the regiment itself.
Such being the frame of mind in which he sat down to read his novel, it was but natural that the progress of his studies should have confirmed any previous tendency to sentiment and domestic subjugation. This eloquent work, in three volumes, purporting to furnish a picture of real life, painted up a little, but not overdrawn, represented, of course, an impossible heroine, a combination of circumstances that never could have taken place, and a jeune premier beautiful as Endymion; nor, judging from his vagaries, apparently much less under the influence of the moon. To use Frank's own expression, the scene that "fetched him," somewhere about the middle of the third volume, ran as follows:
"A sunset of the tropics, or of paradise, crimson, orange, gold, the plumage of the flamingo, the tints of the dying dolphin, were all reflected in the deep pure eyes of that fair girl, as she leaned one snowy arm on the balustrade, and peered out over the lake, herself radiant as the sunset, loving as the flamingo, stern and resolved as the dolphin in his death-pangs. 'He cometh not,' she muttered, 'he cometh not!' and her fairy fingers, closing on the parapet, broke off a morsel of the stonework with the grip and energy of a blacksmith. It fell with a splash in the lake. Could this be the expected signal? Was that important splash but the result of blind accident? Nay, was it not rather the summons of a relentless Fate? Ere the circles that it made in the limpid element had wholly disappeared, a boat was heard to grate upon the shingle beneath the castle. A cloaked figure stood in the prow, masked, booted, belted, and armed to the teeth. But when was true love yet deceived by belts, boots, masks, or pistols? ''Tis he!' she exclaimed, ''tis he!' and in another moment Lady Clara was in Roland's arms, sailing, sailing on towards the sunset, never to part on earth, never to part perhaps in——"
"Quite right too!" said Frank, closing the book with a bang. "Good fellow! plucky girl! I'll be hanged if I won't have a shy! She can but say 'No.' And if worst comes to worst, there's always the other to fall back upon!"
So with this exceedingly disloyal and uncomplimentary adaptation of Miss Ross as a pis-aller, Frank sat himself down at the table lately occupied by Goldthred, to concoct a letter in which, with as little circumlocution as possible, he should ask Miss Hallaton to be his wife.
Much mutual surprise was expressed by these two gentlemen, when, meeting an hour later in Pall Mall, they discovered that they had been fellow-travellers the night before, each in his own mind having envied the good fortune of the other in remaining at Windsor. With such a topic as their past pic-nic to discuss, and a certain indefinable instinct that they had some mysterious interests in common, they soon merged out of mere acquaintance into friendship, or that which the world calls friendship—an alliance for mutual support and convenience, originating in discreet regard for self. Further to cement this bond of brotherhood, they dined together solemnly at their club, and parted heartily tired of each other before eleven o'clock, going straight to bed, I verily believe, in sheer despair. And thus it was that these unfortunates, ardent lovers in their way, spent their Sunday in London.