They knew so many mutual military acquaintances, and military stations, and both were aliens to this monotonous rural existence. Belle was vivacious in appreciative company, related malicious tales of her neighbours, flattered him discreetly about his singing and shooting, and told him, with a sigh, that he reminded her so forcibly of a very great friend of hers, who, she subsequently let fall, was as handsome as a god!--and yet people said that Belle was not clever and that Betty had ten times her brains. Whilst this merry young couple laughed and talked and sang, Mrs. Redmond dozed over her knitting, or woke up with a start, to gaze at the animated faces at the tea table, and to watch George Holroyd furtively, with a cunning, predatory glance out of her little yellowish eyes. Would anything come of _this_? she wondered. She was desperately anxious about her daughter’s future. At her death Noone reverted to another branch of the family, and her beautiful, helpless, hot-tempered Belle would be left to face the world with a very scanty income. Her own life, she knew, could not be prolonged. She was in the deadly grip of a fatal malady, and if she could only see Belle well married, she would die happy and with her mind at rest, but Belle was “getting on,” and was, alas! still Miss Redmond. And she bent all her energies to screwing and scraping every spare halfpenny, in order to leave her daughter a better provision when she herself had passed away. Now and then, she had reluctantly fitted her out for a short campaign in England, for a tour of what proved to be barren visits, remaining herself at Noone, to count the potatoes and sods of turf, and to subsist on rabbits and herrings. The mere act of putting by one sovereign after another, soon became her keenest pleasure, and the enjoyment grew stronger the more it was indulged in, though she always assured herself that this feverish gathering in of shillings and pound notes had nothing to do with a love of money, but solely with her love of Belle! Belle herself had no anxieties about her future. She had made up her mind to marry George Holroyd and accompany him to India--her promised land. She was a young woman of some decision where her own interests were concerned, and possessed a considerable fund of tenacity--in spite of which several of her admirers had detached themselves, and escaped;--and, although she was by no means in love with her new acquaintance, she was enamoured of his profession and his prospects, and her restless spirit yearned for the perpetual changes of scene insured to an officer’s wife. Visions of gay cantonments, and still gayer hill stations, rose before her mental eye--visions in which she saw herself living in a whirl of balls, theatricals, and picnics, the queen of society, the best-looking, best dressed, and most admired of her sex; with legions of generals, aide-de-camps, yea, and commissioners, figuratively, at her feet. With each visit George