[Illustration: COTTAGE HOMES AT RYSLIP.] [Illustration: THATCHED AND WHITE-WASHED COTTAGES, ESSEX.] “OUR HERO.” A TALE OF THE FRANCO-ENGLISH WAR NINETY YEARS AGO. BY AGNES GIBERNE, Author of “Sun, Moon and Stars,” “The Girl at the Dower House,” etc. CHAPTER XX. A GLIMPSE OF LOVELY POLLY. “Now, my dear Polly, I pray you make the very most this evening of your charms. For somebody will be there whom you little think to see.” Polly and Molly, both on a visit to the Bryces in London, looked up sharply. “Yes, indeed, and you may guess, but I vow you’ll never guess the truth. Two young maidens to have such good fortune! Had it come to me in my young days, why, I think ’twould have driven me out of my senses with joy. But you may conjecture—you may conjecture, Polly. Who in the world can it be?” Polly was seated upright on a straight-backed chair, looking as usual exceedingly pretty. Her eyes, softer and more than ever like brown velvet, took a faraway expression, and the delicate tinting of her cheeks grew roseate. She said demurely, after a pause— “If I might conjecture that which my desires would prompt, ma’am, I would say—Captain Ivor!” Mrs. Bryce tapped the floor impatiently with her slippered and sandalled foot. “Pish-pshaw! To be sure, that is proper enough, my dear. But now you may rest satisfied that you have said what propriety demands. And since Captain Ivor is a prisoner in foreign parts, and likely so to remain for many a long year to come, being therefore out of the question, we’ll e’en dismiss the thoughts of him, and I’ll ask Molly whom she would most desire to meet at the dance to-night.” Molly sat upon a second high-backed chair, busily netting. At sixteen—close upon seventeen, indeed—she was more altered from the child of twelve than her twin-brother in the same lapse of time. She had not grown tall, and she was more rounded than in earlier years. Her black eyes looked less big and less anxious, partly because the face had lost its peakiness. A healthy complexion and an expression of straightforward earnestness served in place of good looks. Molly Baron would never be a “belle,” but she might become a woman to whom men and women alike would turn, with a restful certainty of finding in her what they wanted. Her reply was more prompt than Polly’s had been, and it consisted of one single syllable. “Roy!” “But Roy, like Captain Ivor, is a prisoner, child. Like to remain so also. Who next?” “Jack!” Molly said, with equal rapidity. “Nay, Jack is nobody. Jack is one of ourselves, and is in and out perpetually. Jack’s a genteel young fellow enough, I make no question, but somewhat better than Jack awaits you this evening. Eh, Polly—what if it be—no other than Captain Peirce?” “Captain Peirce better than Jack! Nay!” Molly said indignantly.