‘Yes; and if you will listen I’ll tell you all. Do you remember what happened when I came into the room last night? Why, she turned colour and nearly fainted away. That was because she knew me.’
Bob stared at his brother with a face of pain and distrust.
‘For once, Bob, I must say something that will hurt thee a good deal,’ continued John. ‘She was not a woman who could possibly be your wife—and so she’s gone.’
‘You sent her off?’
‘Well, I did.’
‘John!—Tell me right through—tell me!’
‘Perhaps I had better,’ said the trumpet-major, his blue eyes resting on the far distant sea, that seemed to rise like a wall as high as the hill they sat upon.
And then he told a tale of Miss Johnson and the --th Dragoons which wrung his heart as much in the telling as it did Bob’s to hear, and which showed that John had been temporarily cruel to be ultimately kind. Even Bob, excited as he was, could discern from John’s manner of speaking what a terrible undertaking that night’s business had been for him. To justify the course he had adopted the dictates of duty must have been imperative; but the trumpet-major, with a becoming reticence which his brother at the time was naturally unable to appreciate, scarcely dwelt distinctly enough upon the compelling cause of his conduct. It would, indeed, have been hard for any man, much less so modest a one as John, to do himself justice in that remarkable relation, when the listener was the lady’s lover; and it is no wonder that Robert rose to his feet and put a greater distance between himself and John.
‘And what time was it?’ he asked in a hard, suppressed voice.
‘It was just before one o’clock.’