Whether the young Captain Calverley, whom the picture alluded to, was a hero because, when, one day in the hunting-field, our young heiress and her quadruped came to grief over a fence, he made his horse swerve suddenly to avoid disastrous complications, and thereby came to greater grief himself, Mr. Pelly, at any rate, could form no judgment. It was out of his line, he said. So, according to him, was the sequel, in which the sadly mauled mortal portion of the young soldier, with a doubt if the immortal portion was still in residence, was carried to Surley Stakes and qualified--though rather slowly--to resume active service, by the skill of the best of surgeons and the assiduity of an army of nurses. But, hero or not, he was credited with heroism by the young lady, with all the natural consequences. And no doubt his convalescence was all the more rapid that he found himself, when he recovered his senses forty-eight hours after his head struck the corner of a stone wall in his involuntary dismount, in such very delightful company, with such opportunities of improving his relations with it. In fact, the scheme for his removal must have developed very soon, to give him a text for a sermon to the effect that he was Fortune's Toy and the Sport of Circumstances, that he accounted concussion of the brain and a fractured thigh-bone the only real blessings his lot had ever vouchsafed to him, and that happiness would become a Thing of the Past as soon as he rejoined his regiment. He would, however, devote the remainder of his life to treasuring the memories of this little hour of unalloyed bliss, and hoping that his cherished recollections would at almost the rarest possible intervals find an echo somehow and somewhere that his adoration--badly in love as he was--failed in finding a description for, as the climax of a long sentence. And perhaps it was just as well that his resources in prose composition gave out when they did, as nothing was left then but to become natural, and say, "You'll forget all about me, Miss Upwell, you know you will. That's what I meant"--the last with a consciousness that when we are doing prose composition we are apt to say one thing and mean another. Madeline wasn't prepared to be artificial, with this young dragoon or anyone else. She gave him the full benefit of her large blue eyes--because, you see, she had got him down, as it were, and he couldn't possibly become demonstrative with a half-healed fracture of the thigh--and said, "I hope I _shan't_. I shall try not to, anyhow." But this seemed not to give entire satisfaction, as the patient said, rather ruefully, "_You could_, if you tried, Miss Upwell!" To which the young lady, who was not without a mischievous side to her character, answered, "Of course I could!" but immediately repented, and added. "One can do anything one likes, if one tries hard enough, you know!"