'It would be easy to make him love you; but would you marry him?'
'How your little head runs on love and marriage! No, Alison, I shall never marry—again!'
'Poor soul,' thought Alison, admiringly, 'how much she must have loved her first husband!'
And simultaneously with the entrance of Sir Ranald, the three brother officers—Bevil Goring, Jerry Wilmot, and Captain Dalton—were announced, and all these were men of the best style, in accurate morning costume, all more than usually good-looking, set up by drill, easy in bearing, and looking ruddy with their ride from the camp in a chill October day.
'I missed you early in the hunt, Miss Cheyne,' said Jerry, after the introductions were over. 'How you and Goring flew over that first fence!'
'I love to gallop over everything,' replied Alison, 'but I must confess that my sympathies in the field are always with the flying stag, or the poor little panting hare—a miserable, tiny creature, with a horde of men, horses, and dogs after it, and making the welkin ring when in at the death!'
'Yes, though by the way I never know precisely what the said welkin is, unless it be the regions of the air.'
All unaware that his name had been so recently and so curiously on her lovely lips, Captain, or Tony Dalton, as his comrades called him, was saying some commonplaces to Mrs. Trelawney, over whose chair he was stooping.
He was not much her senior perhaps in years, but he had seen much of service in India. Tall and dark, with closely-shorn brown hair, he had an air and face that were commanding; but with a simple grace of bearing that belied any appearance of self-assertion.
After India, where he had been long on a station up country; where all the Europeans were males, and not a lady within three hundred miles; where a wet towel and half a water-melon formed the morning head-dress, and visits of the water-carrier incessant; where books were scarce, serials scarcer, flies and heat plentiful; and where the little tawny women, with their nose-rings and orange-coloured cheeks, were all alike hideous, to see such a woman as Mrs. Trelawny, with her snowy skin, her shell-like ears, and marvellous hands, was something indeed.