Their brown track might be traced for miles, frozen as hard as an oaken plank, except where a slight depression, or a sudden bend, or a farmer’s wall, had kept the white wave from shoaling. So, as soon as a passage had been dug through the borstall, and down the hill to the westward, the Chapmans were free to come and go with their gaudy coach as usual.
Alice took this turn of matters with all the calmness of despair. It was nothing but a childish thing to long for a few days’ reprieve, which could not help her much, and might destroy all the good of her sacrifice. In one way or the other she must go; standing so terribly across the welfare of all that was dear to her, and seeming (as she told herself) to have no one now to whom she was dear. With no one to advise or aid her, no one even to feel for her, she had to meet the saddest doom that can befall proud woman—wedlock with an object.
CHAPTER LXVII.
THE LAST CHANCE LOST.
And now there was but one day left; Monday was come, and on the morrow, Alice was to be Mrs. Stephen Chapman.
“You call yourself an unlucky fellow,” said Colonel Clumps to Hilary, who was leaning back in his easy-chair; “but I call you the luckiest dog in the world. What other man in the British army could have lost fifty thousand guineas, escaped court-martial, and had a good furlough, made it all snug with his sweetheart (after gallivanting to his heart’s content), and then got the chance to get back again under Old Beaky, and march into Paris? I tell you they will march into Paris, sir. What is there to stop them?”
“But, Colonel, you forget that I can scarcely march across the room as yet. And even if I could, there is much to be done before I get back again. Our fellows may go into winter quarters, and then the General’s promise drops; or even without that, he may fail with the Duke of York, who loves him not.”
“Stuff and rubbish, my dear boy! You pay the money—that’s all you’ve got to do. No fear of their refusing it. Of course it will all be kept very quiet; and we shall find in the very next ‘Gazette’ some such paragraph as this: ‘Captain Lorraine, of the Headquarter Staff, who has long been absent on sick leave, is now on his way to rejoin, and will resume his duties upon the Staff.’”
“Come now, Colonel, you are too bad,” cried Hilary, blushing with pleasure, “they never could put me on the Staff again. It is impossible that they could have the impudence.”
“Don’t tell me. Why, they had the impudence never to put me on it! They have the impudence enough for anything. You set to and get strong, that is all. Are you going to your sister’s wedding to-morrow?”