'That was the way our affair of the heart came about, and was ended by my pride, vacillation, and suspicion,' said Fotheringhame; 'and now I have little doubt that she is quite aware that I—the Lancer lover—was her cousin, though I never told her so.'
'How odd of you to act so!' exclaimed Cecil.
'Odd—I was mad, I think!'
'From her manner and words, I thought that you and she possessed in common some mysterious antecedents.'
'An unpleasant way of putting it,' said Fotheringhame, with a shade of annoyance in his face; 'all that time was one of gloom to me. When I had to leave the Lancers I shall never forget the shock it gave me—though of course expected—to see the 'Army List' without my name in it; nor was I ever satisfied till I saw it there again, as a Cameronian. So you see, Falconer, that with all my general heedlessness of bearing, my life has not been without "its little romance, as most lives have, between the age of teetotum and tobacco," as George Eliot has it.'
'I may yet be the means of relighting this old flame again,' said Falconer; 'though it is said that there is nothing so difficult to revive as an old flirtation.'
'It was no flirtation——'
'Save in so far as you were concerned.'
'Until I lost Annabelle, I never knew how much I loved her, and how dear she was to me.'
'If Annabelle Erroll ever loved you she loves you still.'