‘Well,’ said Bob timidly, ‘as it is a ticklish time for him, would it not be worth while to make up any differences before the crash comes?’
‘I have nothing to make up,’ said Anne, with some distress. She still fully believed the trumpet-major to have smuggled away Miss Johnson because of his own interest in that lady, which must have made his professions to herself a mere pastime; but that very conduct had in it the curious advantage to herself of setting Bob free.
‘Since John has been gone,’ continued her companion, ‘I have found out more of his meaning, and of what he really had to do with that woman’s flight. Did you know that he had anything to do with it?’
‘Yes.’
‘That he got her to go away?’
She looked at Bob with surprise. He was not exasperated with John, and yet he knew so much as this.
‘Yes,’ she said; ‘what did it mean?’
He did not explain to her then; but the possibility of John’s death, which had been newly brought home to him by the military events of the day, determined him to get poor John’s character cleared. Reproaching himself for letting her remain so long with a mistaken idea of him, Bob went to his father as soon as they got home, and begged him to get Mrs. Loveday to tell Anne the true reason of John’s objection to Miss Johnson as a sister-in-law.
‘She thinks it is because they were old lovers new met, and that he wants to marry her,’ he exclaimed to his father in conclusion.
‘Then that’s the meaning of the split between Miss Nancy and Jack,’ said the miller.