Returning up the town on one of these occasions, the romantic pelisse flapping behind each horseman’s shoulder in the soft south-west wind, Captain Maumbry glanced up at the oriel.  A mutual¹ nod was exchanged between him and the person who sat there reading.  The reader and a friend in the room with him followed the troop with their eyes all the way up the street, till, when the soldiers were opposite the house in which Laura lived, that young lady became discernible in the balcony.

 

‘They are engaged to be married, I hear,’ said the friend.

 

‘Who—Maumbry and Laura?  Never—so soon?’

 

‘Yes.’

 

‘He’ll never marry.  Several girls have been mentioned in connection with his name.  I am sorry for Laura.’

 

‘Oh, but you needn’t be.  They are excellently matched.’

 

‘She’s only one more.’

 

‘She’s one more, and more still.  She has regularly caught him.  She is a born player of the game of hearts, and she knew how to beat him in his own practices.  If there is one woman in the town who has any chance of holding her own and marrying him, she is that woman.’

 

This was true, as it turned out.  By natural proclivity² Laura had from the first entered heart and soul into military romance as exhibited in the plots and characters of those living exponents³ of it who came under her notice.  From her earliest young womanhood civilians⁴, however promising⁵, had no chance of winning her interest if the meanest warrior⁶ were within the horizon.  It may be that the position of her uncle’s house (which was her home) at the corner of West Street nearest the barracks, the daily passing of the troops, the constant blowing of trumpet-calls a furlong from her windows, coupled with the fact that she knew nothing of the inner realities of military life, and hence idealized it, had also helped her mind’s original

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