"And am yours--yours only!"
"But there is the bell to dress for dinner, Harry--and here come Dora and Gwenny Vaughan," she added, giving a hasty smooth to her hair, which somehow had been a little rumpled during the preceding conversation.
The two girls came in for a minute or so, in their hats and riding habits; the last-named was a very beautiful and distinguished-looking blonde, who could talk about hunting like an old whipper-in, and who received me with kind interest, while Dora did so with her usual gushing empressement.
The dinner, which came subsequently in due course, was rather a tame affair to Winny and me, when contrasted with our recent interview in the drawing-room; but the tender secret we now shared, and the perfect consciousness that no obstacle existed to our marriage, made us both so radiantly happy, that Sir Madoc's rubicund face wore a comical and somewhat perplexed expression, till we had our postprandial cigar together in the conservatory. So the whole affair came about in the fashion I have narrated; yet but a day or two before, I had been affecting a desire to visit the Russian prisoners at Lewes!
At table, of course, I required much assistance, and though I urged that Owen Gwyllim or one of the footmen should attend me, there was often a friendly contention among the three girls to cut my food for me, as if I were a great baby; and like something of that kind, I was flattered, petted, and made much of; and there was something so pleasant in being thus made a fuss with, and viewed as a "Crimean hero," that I scarcely regretted the bones I had left at the Redan.
"And so, poor Harry," said Dora, after hearing the story of that affair, "you had no brave beautiful Sister of Mercy to nurse you?"
"No; I had only Corporal Mulligan, a true and brave-hearted Irishman, who lost an eye at Alma; and a kind-hearted fellow he was!"
Winifred did not talk much; but in her place as hostess seemed brilliantly happy, and quite her old self. We had all a thousand things to talk of, to tell, and to ask each other; and the fate of that strange creature Guilfoyle, or rather the mystery which then attended it, excited almost the commiseration of Sir Madoc, who, once upon a time, was on the point of horse-whipping him. On certain points connected with my residence at Yalta, I was, of course, as mute as a fish.
Of Caradoc he spoke with genuine sorrow--the more so, as he was the last of an old, old Welsh line.
"Poor fellow!" said he; "Phil was a man of whom we may say that which was averred of Colonel Mountain, of the Cameronians, 'that though he were cut into twenty pieces, yet every piece would be a gentleman!'"