While he yet loitered, the eye of Miss Montgomerie met his. What it expressed we will not venture to describe, but its effect upon the young officer was profound. The moment before, discouraged by her apparent reserve, he had stood coldly by, but now startled into animation, he bent upon her an earnest and corresponding look; then, with a wild tumult at his heart, which he neither sought to stifle nor to analyze, and wholly forgetting what had brought him to the spot, he turned and joined his brother, who, at a short distance, stood awaiting his return. CHAPTER IV. At the garrison mess-table that evening the occurrences of the day naturally formed a chief topic of conversation; and a variety of conjectures, more or less probable, regarding the American lady, were hazarded by the officers to some of whom she had become an object of curiosity, as she had to others of interest. This conversation, necessarily _parenthèsed_ with much extraneous matter, in the nature of rapid demands for solids and liquids, during the interesting period devoted to the process of mastication, finally assumed a more regular character when the cloth had been removed, and the attendants retired. "Apropos," remarked Captain Granville, who filled the president's chair. "We ought to have toasted your brother's gallant exploit, Henry; gentlemen, fill your glasses--all full? Then I will give you the health of Lieutenant Grantham, of the squadron." The toast was responded to by all but Captain Molineux. His glass had been filled and raised, but its contents remained untasted. The omission was too marked not to be noticed by more than one of the party; Henry Grantham, whose eye had been fixed on Captain Molineux at the time, of course detected the slight. He sat for some minutes conversing with an unusual and evidently forced animation; then, excusing his early departure under the plea of an engagement with his brother, rose and quitted the mess-room. "What have you done with the ugly lout you took charge of, De Courcy?" inquired Captain Cranstoun, interrupting the short and meaning pause which had succeeded to Grantham's departure. "Why, I calculate, captain," returned the lively aid-de-camp, imitating the nasal drawl and language which had called up so much mirth, even in presence of the general--"I calculate as how I have introduced Ensign Paul, Emilius, Theophilus Arnoldi, of the United States Michigan Militia, into pretty considerable snug quarters--I have billeted him at the inn, in which he had scarcely set foot, when his first demand was for a glass of 'gin sling,' wherewith to moisten his partick'lar damn'd hot, baked clay." "What a vulgar and uncouth animal," observed St. Clair, a Captain of Engineers--"I am not at all surprised at Major Montgomerie's disinclination to acknowledge him as a personal acquaintance."