"Nay—I am too young," I replied, with a hesitating manner and a glowing cheek.
"Yet Wolfe, whom I once knew, was a colonel at twenty. Then you are a cornet?"
I felt the blood rushing to my temples—yet wherefore should I have blushed "for honest poverty?"
"Curiosity is the privilege of our sex," said the young lady, coming to my rescue; "thus mamma is most anxious to know to whose bravery we owed our safety."
"Madam, I have not the honour to be more than a private trooper," said I, with a bearing of pride that had something stern in it.
Mamma did not lose her presence of mind, though the colour in her daughter's cheeks grew deeper, but replied—
"All, indeed! I believed you by your bearing to be an officer." She drew her head within the carriage.
"I thank you, madam; I was not always what I am to-day," said I, sadly.
"And now, my good fellow, if you will favour me with your name, Colonel Preston shall be duly informed, by letter, of your courage."
There was another pause, during which I shortened my reins, and was turning my horse, when the winning voice of her daughter, which had a singularly sweet chord in it, arrested me, as she said—