For it had come to this: he had proposed repeatedly and gained the stage of receiving a fair hearing and some faint encouragement. "Some day--perhaps!" she said, with a stress which indicated a very distant day indeed; and that, of course, was no promise; nor was the pale prospect accompanied by any hope on Nan's part that she could ever love him as she should. Her heart was dead or numb; he heard it again and again, without loss of confidence in his power to quicken it in the end. And this self-confidence stood Ralph in equal stead with Nan and with his own soul: not from the first, yet in a very few weeks, he was playing a winning if a waiting game. He learned from her lips how he had improved in her sight; and though unable to believe there had been so much room for improvement, he was careful to keep the ground thus won in her regard. It was so at every point of his advance. Here and there the gain was trifling, but he never lost an inch. Ralph had an open and yet silent ally in Mr. Merridew; of old he had always wanted this marriage, and now he wanted it more than ever. Nan was not happy; it was the one thing to make her happy. He would have told her so every day but for a plain word in the beginning from Ralph himself. "Din me in her ears," said he, "and I am done; leave it to her, and there is a chance for me. But never another word against Denis Dent; if his name comes up, make excuses for him. You don't know women as I know them, sir, or I wouldn't presume to offer you such advice." It was followed, however, with all loyalty and devotion to their common cause. Not for weeks did the father venture to express any further opinion in the matter; and when he did break silence the occasion justified him. Captain Devenish was ordered out at last. Typhus, dysentery and ague had descended upon the Guards' camp at Aladyn close to Varna; thither Devenish was to sail before the end of June, in charge of a draft to replace those fallen in this unfair fight. It was Mr. Merridew who brought the news home from the City, and capped it with the conviction, now indeed general, that there would be hard fighting somewhere before the end. The resolution to attack Sebastopol was not yet taken, but the probability had long been in the air, and Mr. Merridew spoke of it as an absolute certainty. It might be a short campaign; but from the character of a map which he spread out Mr. Merridew was not of that opinion. Nan took but a perfunctory interest in the map; she knew very well what had been in her father's mind for weeks, and she was entirely prepared for what was coming now.