'I wonder if you will be so merry when we meet again, years hence, if ever,' said Jerry, almost angrily.
'Years hence—what do you mean, Jerry—for I must call you Jerry as of old, if you adopt this tone?' said she, regarding his now grave face attentively.
'I go to the Horse Guards to-morrow to arrange about an exchange for India.'
'Why?'
'Can you ask—when you know that I am a ruined and beggared man?'
He was looking doggedly out of the window, and did not see how her sensitive lips quivered, and how her shapely bodice was heaving with the painful pulsations of her warm and affectionate heart; for Bella—impulsive Bella—felt that if she said only a little more she must break down altogether; and the muscles of her slender throat ached with the efforts she made to keep back her desire to weep.
'Ruined—Jerry—you?' she said, after a pause.
'You know how, and why; the past is over—at an end, and for ever; but do think of me kindly, Bella, when I am far away from you—for my own kindred are few and cold—yea, seem to have little heart for me.'
'Jerry, dear Jerry,' said the girl, in a low voice, 'ere this, I thought you would have asked me to marry—to—to marry you.'
'I dared not, Bella.'