The major tried, and won the gratitude without achieving the result desired. Perhaps he did not try quite so hard as he pretended, and perhaps in time the widow detected in him a lukewarmness for the cause upon which she had set her unreasonable heart; at all events the major failed to make the quick advance he had counted upon in Mrs. Astley's affections. At the end of the summer their friendship was still nothing more, and the convict gardener still a convict gardener. As neighbours, the pair would read together the _Pickwick_ numbers as they came and play an occasional game of cribbage in the major's verandah; but as sure as that veteran uttered a sentimental word touching his lonely condition or hers (and the one involved the other), so surely would the widow rise and beg him to escort her home. Nor did the view from the Old Point Piper Road soften her at all with its sparkling moonlit brilliance. Yet it was here, early in the following summer, that the gallant old fellow, after an extra half-bottle with his dinner, at last declared himself. Mrs. Astley heard him with an expressionless face turned towards the harbour; but ere he finished, the moonlight that strewed those waters with shimmering gems had found two also in her eyes. "I cannot," she cried. "I loved my husband--I love him still--I shall never marry again!" "But so did I love my sainted wife," protested the major; "yet I would marry to-morrow. I consider it no disrespect to the dead; on the contrary, it is the highest compliment we can pay them, as showing so happy an experience of wedlock that we would fain repeat it. Not that I have thought so always," he added hastily, to quell a look which made him uncomfortable. "I don't believe you think so now," replied the candid widow. "You not only mean less than you say; you feel less; and must forgive me, for you may not know it yourself, but a woman is never deceived. Think it over and you will agree with me; but never, never let us speak of this again. It hurts me to hurt you--and I like you so much as a friend!" As for Thomas Blacker, the first plunge had completely sobered him, and he bitterly repented that indiscretion of the table which had led him into a declaration as premature as it had been also unpremeditated. As a soldier, however, he took no kindlier to retreat for the mere fact of deploring his advance; retreat, indeed, was out of the question: and the major's further protestations were pitched in a key calculated to acquit him of a charge which rankled, being true.