His wife one morning found him standing over a large ship letter directed to the governess, with somewhat the expression of distrustful pugnacity with which a dog walks round a hedgehog.
"Is that for Miss Leigh?" said she, carelessly.
"Yes," with much solemnity. "Apparently she has a correspondent in the Navy. It is not a sort of thing I like, and I must say I have often thought Miss Leigh too young and flighty for me."
"Oh, I believe she is engaged, poor girl!" said Mrs. Markham, slipping out a white one. "And she gets the children on beautifully. You thought Emma already so improved in playing."
"Well if you know all about it, that's another thing. I trust she doesn't put nonsense in the children's heads. Emma is getting very forward and inquisitive."
His wife felt secretly excited, for she was sure this letter must be from the errant husband, especially as the governess would not read it in public, but pocketed it with a slight nervousness of manner.
Time passed on, and Mrs. Markham had discovered nothing.
Bluebell, in her diligent revision of the papers, found much of personal interest. Colonel Rolleston's regiment had been ordered home to proceed to the Crimea, and she well knew the anxiety his family must be enduring.
It seemed cold and ungrateful to be unable to write one word of sympathy to Mrs. Rolleston, but any renewal of intercourse must lead to explanations, and it was her cruel fate to be able to give none. One other name, too, she saw in the public print that ought no longer to have had the power to thrill her as it did. Well, it was not so long ago, after all: but, however mentally disquieted we leave our heroine, as she has now drifted, outwardly, into a peaceful haven, we must return to others in the narrative who have more to do.