"How?"
"We march at daybreak."
"For the East?"
"Yes; for the East, at last."
"So soon?" exclaimed both girls at once.
"The order came within an hour or little more, when Sir Madoc was with me."
The eyes of the girls were full of sudden tears, and they gazed on me with an honest emotion of tenderness and real interest, that, considering the rare beauty and high position of both, were alike flattering and bewildering; and I felt that this was one of those moments when, to be a soldier or a sailor on the eve of departure to the seat of war, was indeed worth something.
And Winifred, the impulsive Welsh fairy, so fresh-hearted, so simple in her motives, and sweet in her disposition, uttered something very like a little sob in her slender white throat, adding apologetically to Estelle, "We have been such old friends, Harry Hardinge and I."
"You never wrote to me, Estelle," said I, softly, yet reproachfully.
"I dared not; you remember our arrangement," she replied, with hesitation.