'How dare you, a mere girl, talk thus?'
'Take care, papa. If driven desperate, there is no knowing what I may—not say—but do!'
Sir Ranald became silent. He had never seen her in this mood before; and he, of course, ascribed it to 'the fatal influence that fellow Goring had obtained over her mind.'
So this conversation ended; but the interview with her father and that with Cadbury are but examples of many with which she was tormented daily ad nauseam.
Alison ere long had fresh food for sorrow given to her, when a pilot boat brought off to the Firefly some London papers, and in these she was informed—as if by chance—there were rumours of the fast approaching war in Africa, and she saw the glances, most meaning glances, of satisfaction that were exchanged by her father and Lord Cadbury, on its being announced that among the troops detailed for service in the field under Sir Garnet Wolseley was the regiment of Bevil Goring; and so a double and more terrible separation—perhaps a final and fatal one—was before them, and the heart of the poor girl seemed to fill with tears as she read and re-read the startling paragraph.
END OF THE FIRST VOLUME.
LONDON: PRINTED BY DUNCAN MACDONALD, BLENHEIM HOUSE.