'Not even with you; but I was weary, triste—glad to do anything to forget my own thoughts; but as for your friend Captain Smith——'
'Alison—my dear Miss Cheyne—how often am I to assure you that I know of no such man? If he was a Captain, in presuming to call himself a friend of mine, and acting as he did, he deserved the most severe punishment; and let me assure you that as we were in Belgium I should have lost no time in inviting him to breathe the morning air on the ramparts, or anywhere else,' added Cadbury, in a valiant tone, even while wincing at the recollection of the invitation he had received for a similar 'breather' in the Lunette St. Laurent.
'I thought duels were as much out of fashion as hoops, patches, and hair powder,' said Alison, with a little mockery in her tone.
'So did I, by Jove,' responded Cadbury, with some fervour in his tone. Then he added—'And so Sir Ranald will not appear to-day?'
'No—he is too unwell, and it is only when I think of his condition,' said Alison, with a quiver of her sweet lip and downcast eyelashes, 'I feel such gratitude to the donor of my birthday gift—it has given me so many things for papa that, I am not ashamed to say, I could never have procured.'
'And you have got no certainty of who sent it to you?' asked Cadbury, with a curious and very artful modulation of voice, as he slightly patted her hand.
'No—though I may strongly suspect,' replied Alison, while a painful kind of blush suffused her pale cheek.
'Suspect! can't you guess, rather?'
'Unless—it was you—or the kindest of friends.'
'I do not admit quite that it was; but—'