"Do I? Yes; I should just think I do. Look here! What do you think of that?"

He took out and opened the little case, breathed on the diamonds, and then held them in a good light.

"Oh, how lovely!" said Clotilde softly.

"Ain't they?" said Elbraham. "They're the best they'd got at Hanc.o.c.k's, in Bond Street. Pretty stiff figure, too, I can tell you."

"Are you fond of diamonds, Mr Elbraham?" she said, with a peculiar look at him from beneath her darkly fringed lids--a strange look for one so innocent and young.

"Yes, on some people," he said. "Are you?"

"Oh yes; I love them," she said eagerly.

"All right, then. Look here, Clotilde; say the word, and you can have diamonds till you are sick of them, and everything else. I--hang it all! I'm not used to this sort of thing," he said, dabbing his moist face with his handkerchief; "but I said to myself, when I came to-night, 'I won't shilly-shally, but ask her out plain.' So look here, my dear, may I put this diamond ring on the finger of the lady that's to be Mrs Elbraham as soon as she likes?"

Clotilde darted one luminous look at him which took in his squat, vulgar figure and red face, and then her eyes half-closed, and she saw tall, manly, handsome Marcus Glen look appealingly in her eyes, and telling her he loved her with all his heart.

She loved him--she told herself she loved him very dearly; but he was poor, and on the one side was life in lodgings in provincial towns wherever the regiment was stationed; on the other side, horses and carriages and servants, a splendid town mansion, diamonds, dresses, the opera, every luxury and gaiety that money could command.

"Poor Marcus!" she sighed to herself. "He's very nice!"

"Come," said Mr Elbraham; "I don't suppose you want me to go down on my knees and propose, do you? I want to do the thing right, but I'm a business man, you know; and, I say, Clotilde, you're the most beautiful gal I ever saw in my life."

She slowly raised her eyes to his, and there was a wicked, mocking laugh in her look as she said in a low tone:

"Am I?"

"Yes, that you are," he whispered in a low, pa.s.sionate tone.

"You are laughing at me," she said softly.

"'Pon my soul I'm not," he whispered again; "I swear I'm not; and I love you--there, I can't tell you how much. I say, don't play with me. I'll do anything you like--give you anything you like. I'll make the princesses bite their lips with jealousy to see your jewels. I will, honour! May I? Yes? Slip it on? I say, my beautiful darling, when may I put on the plain gold one?"

"Oh, hush!" she whispered softly, as she surrendered her hand, and fixed her eyes in what he told himself was a loving, rapturous gaze upon his; "be content now."

"But no games," he whispered; "you'll be my wife?"

"Yes," she said in the same low tone, and he raised the beringed hand to his lips, while the Honourable Isabella uttered a little faint sigh, and her book trembled visibly in her attenuated hands.

"Hah!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Mr Elbraham; and then to himself: "What things diamonds are!"

Perhaps he would have felt less satisfied if he had known that, when Clotilde fixed her eyes upon his, she was looking down a long vista of pleasure stretched out in the future.

At the same moment the face of Marcus Glen seemed to rise up before her, but she put it aside as she lifted the hand that Elbraham had just kissed.

"He could not have brought me such a ring as that," she said to herself; and then, "Heigho! poor fellow; but it isn't my fault. I must tell him I am only doing what my dear aunts wish."

She placed the ring against her deep-red lips and kissed it very softly, her beautiful eyes with their long fringed lids looking dark and dewy, and full of a delicious languor that made Mr Elbraham sit with his arms resting upon his knees, and gaze at her with half-open mouth, while he felt a strange feeling of triumph at his power as a man of the world, and thought of how he would show off his young wife to all he knew, and gloat over their envy.

Then a sense of satisfaction and love of self came over him, and he indulged in a little glorification of Mr Elbraham.

"Litton's a humbug," he said to himself; "I can get on better without his advice than with it. Women like a fellow to be downright with them, and say what he means."

Volume 2, Chapter X.

GLEN DECLARES WAR.

d.i.c.k Millet placed a note in his friend's hand one day during parade, and Glen thrust it out of sight on the instant, glancing sidewise to see if Major Malpas had noticed the act, and then biting his lip with vexation at d.i.c.k being so foolish.

A good deal of the foolishness was on his own side, for had he taken the letter in a matter-of-fact manner, no one would have paid the slightest heed, or fancied that it came from a lady in a clandestine way.

But, as is generally the case in such matters, the person most anxious to keep his correspondence a secret is one of the first to betray himself, and, feeling this, Glen was in no very good humour.

The secret correspondence he had been carrying on with Clotilde was very sweet; but it annoyed him sadly, for his was not a nature to like the constant subterfuge. By nature frank and open, there was to him something exceedingly degrading in the fact that servants were bribed and the aunts deceived; and with a stern determination to put an end to it all, and frankly speak to the Honourable Misses Dymc.o.x concerning his attachment to Clotilde, he went on with his duties till the men were dismissed.

"How could you be so stupid, d.i.c.k!" he exclaimed, as soon as they were clinking back, sabre and spur, to their quarters.

"Foolish!" said the little fellow, with a melodramatic laugh; "I thought you would like to get your letter. I don't care about keeping all the fun to myself."

"What's the matter?" said Glen, smiling. "Has the fair Marie been snubbing you?"

"No. Look at your letter," said the little fellow tragically.

Glen placed his hand in his breast, but, altering his mind, he walked on to his room before taking out the letter and glancing at it; then leaping up, he strode out into the pa.s.sage and across to d.i.c.k's quarters, to find that gentleman looking the very image of despair.

"Here, what does this mean?" exclaimed Glen. "Why did you not send my note with yours?"

"Did!"

"Then how is it you have brought it back?"

"That scoundrel Joseph!" exclaimed d.i.c.k. "I won't believe but that it's some trick on his part, for I don't trust a word he says."

"What does he say, then?"

"That they returned the notes unopened, and that--can you bear it?"

"Bear it! Bear what? Of course--yes; go on."

"I've heard that Clotilde has accepted Mr Elbraham, and they are going to be married directly."

Glen stood and glared at him for a moment, and then burst into a hearty laugh.

"Absurd! nonsense! Why, who told you this?"

"Joseph."

"Rubbish! Joseph is an a.s.s. The fellow forgot to deliver the letters."