'I know not how to thank you, Captain Dalton, for your kindness to Netty,' said the beautiful widow, with her brightest smile, 'it is much too valuable a present for a child.'
'She will not always be a child, and in the years to come——'
'The years to come; she is barely nine, and at twenty it is difficult to think of what life may be at thirty—still more at fifty,' said she, with a curious emphasis, as her eyelids drooped.
'But, like myself, you are not yet thirty,' said Dalton, 'hence we are both a long way off fifty.'
After this he rode over occasionally from the camp—it was rather an idle time with him then, before the spring drills of the next year commenced—and he seemed rapidly to establish himself at the Grange as a friend, and on a better basis than the younger man, poor Jerry Wilmot, had done, for the latter name was off even the lady's visitors' list now.
In life and history passages seem to repeat themselves; thus, just as Dalton arrived one evening, he heard, through the open window, the voice of Laura Trelawney singing the old song before referred to, and with the strain there came many a memory he had been striving to forget.
'Strange!' he muttered; 'that song again!'
Sweet, clear, and sad, as if it was meant for him, and him alone, her voice seemed to come floating to him in liquid melody, in pain and pathos.
Then he heard some merry voice, with which he was familiar; and as he was ushered into the pretty drawing-room, wherein Jerry met his doom, for a man who was evidently fast conceiving a tendresse for the brilliant Mrs. Trelawney, it was curious that he should feel a kind of relief—a kind of protection for himself, or from committing himself too far—in the casual presence of Alison Cheyne and Bevil Goring.
The former smiled brightly, and gave Bevil a glance of intelligence as Dalton was ushered in. It was evidently, both thought, becoming a case, and Alison was already beginning to see herself a prospective bridesmaid and Bevil groomsman.