"Why, this is better than I thought," he said. "How fortunate I was in coming this evening! There, please do not look so distressed. A soldier takes such risks as these every day, and never thinks of them. You have before you a happy life, Miss Laura, and I am very, very glad. Good courage, and good-by," and his manner now was frank, cheerful, and brotherly. She partly obeyed an impulse to speak, but checked it, and tremblingly bent her head; but the pressure she gave his hand meant more than he or even she herself understood at the time. "Good-by, Mr. Beaumont," he said, hurriedly. "I need not wish you happiness, since you already possess it;" and he hastened from the room and the house without once looking back. A moment later they heard his rapid resolute tread echoing from the stony pavement, but it speedily died away. Laura listened breathlessly at the window until the faintest sound ceased. She had had her wish. She had seen a man who was good enough and brave enough to face any danger to which he felt impelled by a chivalric sense of duty. She had seen a man depart upon as knightly an expedition as any of which she had ever read, but it was not her knight. "This young Haldane is a brave fellow, and I had no idea that there was so much of him," remarked Mr. Beaumont in his quiet and refined tones. "Really, take it all together, this has been a scene worthy of the brush of a great painter." "Oh, Auguste!" exclaimed Laura; "how can you look only on the aesthetic side of such a scene?" And she threw herself into a low chair and sobbed as if her heart would break. Mr. Beaumont was much perplexed, for he found that all of his elegant platitudes were powerless either to comfort or to soothe her. "Leave her with me," said Mrs. Arnot. "The excitements of the day have been too much for her. She will be better to-morrow." Mr. Beaumont was glad to obey. He had been accustomed from childhood to leave all disagreeable duties to others, and he thought that Laura had become a trifle hysterical. "A little lavender and sleep is all that she requires," he remarked to himself as he walked home in the starlight. "But, by Jove! she is more lovely in tears than in smiles." That he, Auguste Beaumont, should risk the loss of her and all his other possessions by exposing his precious person to a loathsome disease did not enter his mind. "Oh, auntie, auntie, I would rather have gone myself and died, than feel as I do to-night," sobbed Laura.