"I felt quite certain, Miss Gauntlet, that it was to you I owed my epaulettes, and I pray you to accept of my gratitude for your friendship and memory. My military escapade! Is it thus you term the resource of stern necessity? Would it have been an escapade had I turned highwayman, or joined some desperate privateer? Few resources are left to a penniless gentleman, so I chose the most honourable." "I deplore your bitterness of spirit, cousin Basil," said she, "and I pity you; but what could--what _can_ I do?" "I ask no pity, Miss Gauntlet," I replied, somewhat ruffled; "but permit me to lead you from this--here we cannot converse with freedom." And taking her hand, we went forth into the sunny lawn, Aurora holding her riding-habit gathered in her left hand, her ostrich feather drooping over her right shoulder, and very lovely and graceful she looked in the bloom of her youth and beauty. "Forgive me," said she, almost with tears in her eyes, and a quiver on her pouting lip, for she knew in what a hostile aspect I viewed her; "but I think your conduct to me, as a kinswoman who seeks to befriend you, most unkind and ungracious! Think of what is before you, and that we may never see or meet each other again." I laughed and replied, "We have not seen much of each other hitherto, Miss Gauntlet." "Call me Aurora!" said she, grasping her switch with an impulse that was not all playfulness. "But then, when I am such a scape-grace--outcast if you will--what the devil does it matter what is before me, or how soon I am shot? Thanks to you, however, my dear cousin, I shall die in the position of a gentleman." "I would have sent you a few hundred guineas on your promotion, Basil; but mamma reminded me of your dangerous pride, your haughty and resentful spirit, so I tore up the cheque after signing it." "You judged rightly, my dear cousin; but I thank you, though I would not have accepted the money. The commission you have thrust upon me----" "Thrust--oh fie, Basil! It was simply managed," said she, smiling, "by a note from mamma to Mr. Pitt, the great commoner, who was once himself a cornet of cavalry; in the Blues, I think, was he not?" "That commission I hoped to have won otherwise. However----" I paused, as there was a tearful and angry expression in Aurora's eyes, and very beautiful eyes they were, with lashes thick, dark, and long, which imparted to them a charming softness. Then cousinship is such a strange affinity--something like a sister and more like a sweetheart, that I committed some very ungracious speech to silence, for I now began to perceive that from her mother Aurora inherited a true English girl's face, in expression the sweetest, in features the softest, perhaps, in the world. "And you march----" she began, to change the subject. "To-morrow, at eight in the morning." "So early! Yet I shall ride over from Tunbridge Wells to see you off." "Thank you, Aurora; but at such an hour----"