Her glance drooped, then she lifted her long, silky and most killing lashes, and Roland gazed with unconcealed tenderness into her eyes, which were of that deeply dark blue, which at times and in some lights, especially by night, seem almost black.
"You are, then, going to India?" she asked, in a breathless voice.
"No, Miss Darnel; and yet I am come to say good-bye."
"Good-bye?"
"We take the field to-morrow."
"Against whom?" she asked, growing very pale; "the Insurgents?"
"Yes—the French malcontents and others, I am sorry to say."
"And to-morrow—oh, that is sudden indeed—mamma is from home—and—and——"
Roland could see how her bosom heaved; his heart was rushing to his head, and he drew nearer to her. A black velvet riband, that hung down her back from her delicate white neck, was awry; he put it straight, and then trembled. No one surpassed Roland Ruthven in confidence with women, or at a little bout of persiflage with a jolly flirting girl; but now he was very silent and sad.
The frill of lace that encircled her neck was ruffled in one place, and by a delicate and almost caressing touch he smoothed it as her own brother might have done; then his hands stole softly downward and took each, of hers, while his heart beat like lightning.