This service involved him in as much danger as if he had been in the very front of the fighting; and, indeed, he was known to have done feats, for what is called the advantage of the public, to which the stand made by a mere soldier, even in the most urgent circumstances, was not to be compared. All this was extremely interesting, not to say exciting, to his friends. Mrs. Lennox had the paper sent after her wherever she travelled; and, indeed, it was great part of her day’s occupation to read it, which she did with devotion. “The correspondent is a friend of ours,” she said to the other English people in the hotels. “We know him, I may say, very well, and naturally I take a great interest.” The importance of his position as the author of those letters which interested everybody, and even the familiar way in which he talked of generals and commanders-in-chief, impressed her profoundly. As for Rosalind, she said nothing, but she, too, read all about the war with an attention which was breathless, not quite sure in her mind that it was not under a general’s helmet that those crisp locks of gray were curling, or that the vivid eyes which had looked into hers with such expression were not those of the hero of the campaign. It did not seem possible, somehow, that he could be less than a general. She took the paper to her room in the evening, when Aunt Sophy had done with it, and read and read. The charm was upon her that moved Desdemona, and it was difficult to remember that the teller of the tale was not the chief mover in it. How could she help but follow him in his wanderings wherever he went? It was the least thing she could do in return for what he had given to her--for that passion which had made her tremble--which she wondered at and admired as if it had been poetry. All this captivated the girl’s fancy in spite of herself, and gave her an extraordinary interest in everything he said, and that was said of him. But, notwithstanding, it was not Mr. Rivers who accompanied her in the spirit on all the journeys she made, and to all the beautiful places which filled her with rapture. Not Mr. Rivers--a visionary person, one whose very name was to her unknown. CHAPTER XXXVI. The events of the night on which Mrs. Trevanion left Highcourt had at this period of the family story fallen into that softened oblivion which covers the profoundest scars of the heart after a certain passage of time, except sometimes to the chief actor in such scenes, who naturally takes a longer period to forget.