Another moment, and he was face to face with the smiling and brilliant Bella, who received him with somewhat of a flutter. A hot colour swept through the girl's soft face, and, retiring as suddenly, left her rather pale. 'I hope I don't intrude on you,' said Jerry, seized with a curious access of bashfulness. 'I find you sitting, full of thought, with your head on one side, like a canary.' 'Was I?' said she, caressing a great fox-terrier, with a plated collar--Twesildown's present, no doubt, thought Jerry. The latter had called in the hope of having a solemn leave-taking, if not something better--one of those eternal adieux peculiar, he thought, to heroes and heroines in novels and plays; thus he was rather bewildered to find that Bella began to run on in a style of conversation (adopted to cover her own nervousness or chagrin) that was 'sparkling;' thus she chatted away, without waiting for answers, on subjects culled from the society papers, fashionable journals, and so forth, leaving him for a time, as he thought, 'unable to get a word in, even edgeways,' till he announced to her that 'the battalion had received its letters of readiness, and that the route had come.' At these tidings her manner and colour changed at once, and her voice and eyes softened, as she said, 'And you are really going away?' 'At last!' 'To Ashanti.' 'Yes, to Ashanti,' he replied. Each seemed as if afraid to trust themselves to words of their own. What he was doing while he spoke he scarcely knew; but he was trying to fit on the top of his fingers in succession a tiny silver thimble picked from her work-basket, and in every case without success. The doubts in the mind of each still kept the cold cloud between them--she believing that the love he might speak of again was prompted by worldly selfishness combating with family pride: he fearing that she received his love as inspired by fear of the mortgages alone. 'Surely this is very sudden?' said she, after a pause. 'Oh no, we have expected a move for some time past--you will miss me, I hope?' 'We have not seen much of you lately.' 'However, I should like to take with me into my place of exile--for such I deem it--a knowledge, a hope that you did miss me a little.' Bella was about to reply, what she knew not, but a choking emotion came into her white, slender throat. Jerry saw the emotion, and gathering courage, said, 'Do you remember, Bella, that more than once I had struggled with the love with which you had inspired me till I could keep the secret no longer.' Jerry was still on the wrong tack, and was again terribly misunderstood. Bella's pride and indignation came again to her aid, and she replied, with a haughty smile, 'I am not likely to forget, Captain Wilmot: women do not forget such speeches, or when a friend takes up the _rôle_ of a lover; but, after what you _did_ say, we can never be the same to each other again.'