'Dismissed!'
'Poor fellow—I remember well; and this notice?'
'Refers to me—it must—the sentence of dismissal has been cancelled; though I cannot understand how, or through whom. I thought I had not a friend in the world—save one,' he added, as he thought of Mary.
'How did all this cursed evil come about?'
And Cecil told him all—at least so far as he knew.
'I see it all, as plain as a pikestaff!' exclaimed Stanley, when the latter concluded; 'something has turned up—something new come to light, and they've reinstated you. You were dismissed generally, not specifically, and so rendered incapable of serving Her Majesty again; it makes all the difference in the world! Another bumper of wine, to re-wet the old commission!'
Cecil drained the glass like one who was sore athirst, for he was then under considerable mental excitement.
Restored to his rank and to the old Cameronians—the cloud under which he had left the service, and which so nearly broke his heart, dispelled! The proceedings of that most fatal court-martial, which in his dreams had so often haunted him as a nightmare—cancelled, as if they had never been; how had all this come to pass, and who was the guardian angel that had brought it about?
A fever of impatience possessed him. But he could not yet, with honour, quit the Servian army, though he had the power of resigning at any moment. He had no official letter; perhaps the Horse Guards knew not where he was—and letters, if any, for him, might be at the bottom of the Morava, as a mishap had befallen the mail; and more than all, a general action—a great battle, a decisive one for Servia, was confidently believed to be upon the tapis.
Then he would think, if it should be all some mysterious mistake, and this notice referred, by a blunder, to some one else—a mistake, after all—after all! for he had been so long accustomed to the frowns of Fortune, that he feared she would never smile upon him permanently again.