"Nonsense, man, there's no use in making a secret of the matter," returned the positive grenadier. "The subject was discussed after dinner yesterday, and there was nobody present who didn't agree, that if you had won her heart you had given your own in exchange." "God forbid!" said Henry Grantham with unusual gravity of manner, while he looked affectionately on the changing and far from satisfied countenance of his conscious brother, "for I repeat with Captain Cranstoun, I like her not. Why, I know not; still I like her not, and I shall be glad, Gerald, when you have consigned her to the place of her destination." "Pooh! pooh! nonsense!" interrupted Captain Granville; "never mind, Gerald," he pursued, good-humoredly, "she is a splendid girl, and one that you need not be ashamed to own as a conquest. By heaven, she has a bust to warm the bosom of an anchorite, and depend upon it, all that Cranstoun has said arises only from pique that he is not the object preferred. Those black eyes of hers have set his ice blood upon the boil, and he would willingly exchange places with you, as I honestly confess I should." Vexed as Gerald certainly felt at the familiar tone the conversation was now assuming in regard to Miss Montgomerie, and although satisfied that mere pleasantry was intended, it was not without a sensation of relief that he found it interrupted by the entrance of the several non-commissioned officers with their order-books. Soon after the party broke up. CHAPTER X.