"Adieu, Basil!"
"Till to-morrow," I added.
She kissed her gloved hand to me, and the smiling major led her away with all haste.
I was happier after this interview than I had been for many a day. The kindness that the warmhearted and impulsive Aurora seemed to cherish for me gave her another and a nearer interest in my mind. Animosity died within me, and I began to think it was charming to have at least one relation who loved me for myself, and I thought of our old Scottish proverb, which says that "Blood is thicker than water." Moreover, how could she help the tenor of my crusty grandfather's odious will, or that fatality by which my cousin Tony broke his valuable neck and made her an heiress?
We paraded duly for the march next day. The several troops were formed, their rolls called, and as the clock of the old market-place struck eight, the whole regiment moved off amid the cheers of the populace and the lamentations of those soldiers' wives who were left behind with their poor little ones, their treasured marriage lines, and a "begging pass" to their own parish wherever it might be—too often the usual and cruel wind-up of military matrimony.
At that moment Aurora Gauntlet, mounted on her dashing grey—a pad she rode in compliment to us—her cheeks flushed by a long ride in the pure morning air, her skirt and plume and golden hair floating behind her, cantered up to the column, accompanied by Major Shirley in his staff uniform, and by John Trot, the valiant hero of Wandsworth Common, in very gay livery, and like the staff officer, well mounted.
"I'm just in time, I find," said she, as I drew aside from my troop (which being the Light one was in the rear, as the corps was marched with the right in front) and reined up beside her.
"I was looking for you anxiously, Aurora. Will you keep this document for me, cousin? for if I am killed in Germany, I have no desire that it should be used by some boor to light his pipe with or wrap his butter in."
It was the diploma of the Netherwood baronetcy, running in the name of "CAROLUS, DEI GRATIA, REX SCOTIÆ ET ANGLIÆ, &c. &c., nostro Johanni Gauntleti de Netherwood, ejusque hæredibus masculis de corpore, &c., titulam gradum et dignitatem militis Baronetti in hac antiqua parte Regni Nostri Scotiæ," and so forth.
"You shall be the custodier of this choice piece of archæology, for with my sword, Aurora, it is all my inheritance now. In my haversack or valise I have borne it ever since old Nathan Wylie, Sir Basil's evil mentor, sent it to me as a taunt amid my misfortunes."