'If there is any nonsense still in her head about this fellow, surely it must end for ever now!'
So Cecil, in a state of utter insensibility, was borne away by the hands of kind comrades, placed in a carriage, and conveyed home to his quarters by Acharn and Dick Freeport, who were in an intense state of concern and bewilderment; yet 'all went merry as a marriage bell' at the regimental ball, and the dancing continued till the morning sun began to redden the castle towers and Arthur's rocky cone; for hundreds in the rooms knew nothing of the matter; a few red-coats were suddenly missed—some engagements broken—and that was all.
Mary danced no more that night, of course—or for the remainder of the morning, rather—and all that passed seemed a horrible dream, in which, however, Hew, singular to say, bore no part as yet in her mind, notwithstanding the significance of her words of warning during the dance. No suspicion so utterly monstrous as the reality was likely to occur to a mind like hers.
The general and his party retired. He was horribly perplexed and shocked by an event so utterly out of his ken and experience, and he could recall no parallel case in all the long course of his military career—an officer taken thus in a ball-room; for of course, such is human nature, that the worst construction was instantly put upon it.
'Hah!' muttered Hew, as the carriage bowled through the empty but magnificent streets to the westward; 'this comes of taking too much cognac with his soda-water. He'll be drummed out of society, and the regiment too, I suppose, for this,' he added with a grin to Mrs. Garth, who sat back in a corner of the carriage and sobbed sorrowfully.
Finding that no answer was made to his ill-natured remarks, Hew said again:
'This Falconer, used to laugh at the colonel's jokes and toady to his betters; but, by Jove, he won't have a chance of laughing at the colonel's jokes after this!'
'Silence, Hew,' said the general, grimly; 'but I am thinking more of the honour of the regiment than of him.'
'She will either marry me now quietly, or she will not,' thought Hew, triumphantly and pitilessly; 'if she does not, I suppose her tin will come to me anyhow, thanks to her father's will and this old fool, Sir Piers—shame to call the old fellow a fool, though, for being so deuced friendly to me!' he added mentally, with a hiccough.
It has been said truly, that there are times, which come into the lives of some of us, in which the agonies of years are compressed into a few minutes—yea, it may be a second.