In the meantime our worthy little Lieutenant Puddock — by this time quite reconciled to the new state of things, walked up to Belmont, with his head a great deal fuller — such and so great are human vagaries — of the interview pending between him and Aunt Becky than of the little romance which had exploded so unexpectedly about a fortnight ago.

He actually saw Miss Gertrude and my Lord Dunoran walking side by side, on the mulberry walk by the river; and though he looked and felt a little queer, perhaps, a little absurd, he did not sigh, or murmur a stanza, or suffer a palpitation; but walked up to the hall-door, and asked for Miss Rebecca Chattesworth.

Aunt Becky received him in the drawing-room. She was looking very pale, and spoke very little, and very gently for her. In a reconciliation between two persons of the opposite sexes — though the ages be wide apart — there is almost always some little ingredient of sentiment.

The door was shut, and Puddock’s voice was heard in an indistinct murmur, upon the lobby. Then there was a silence, or possibly, some speaking in a still lower key. Then Aunt Becky was crying, and the lieutenant’s voice cooing through it. Then Aunt Becky, still crying, said —

‘A longer time than you think for, lieutenant; two years, and more — always! And the lieutenant’s voice rose again; and she said —‘What a fool I’ve been!’ which was again lost in Puddock’s accents; and the drawing-room door opened, and Aunt Rebecca ran up stairs, with her handkerchief to her red nose and eyes, and slammed her bed-room door after her like a boarding-school miss.

And the general’s voice was heard shouting ‘luncheon’ in the hall; and Dominick repeated the announcement to Puddock, who stood, unusually pale and very much stunned, with the handle of the open drawing-room door in his hand, looking up toward the bed-room in an undecided sort of way, as if he was not clear whether it was not his duty to follow Aunt Becky. On being told a second time, however, that the general awaited him at luncheon, he apprehended the meaning of the message, and went down to the parlour forthwith.

The general, and my lord Dunoran, and Miss Gertrude, and honest Father Roach, were there; and Aunt Becky being otherwise engaged, could not come.

Puddock, at luncheon, was abstracted — frightened — silent, for the most part; talking only two or three sentences during that sociable meal, by fits and starts; and he laughed once abruptly at a joke he did not hear. He also drank three glasses of port.

Aunt Rebecca met him with her hood on in the hall. She asked him, with a faltering sort of carelessness, looking very hard at the clock, and nearly with her back to him —

‘Lieutenant, will you take a turn in the garden with me?’

To which Puddock, with almost a start — for he had not seen her till she spoke — and, upon my word, ’tis a fact, with a blush, too — made a sudden smile, and a bow, and a suitable reply in low tones; and forth they sallied together, and into the garden, and up and down the same walk, for a good while — a long while — people sometimes don’t count the minutes — with none but Peter Brian, the gardener, whom they did not see, to observe them.

When they came to the white wicket-door of the garden, Aunt Rebecca hastily dropped his arm, on which she had leaned; and together they returned to the house very affably; and there Aunt Becky bid him good-bye in a whisper, a little hastily; and Puddock, so soon as he found Dominick, asked for the general.

He had gone down to the river; and Puddock followed. As he walked along the court, he looked up; there was a kind of face at the window. He smiled a great deal and raised his hat, and placed it to his heart, and felt quite bewildered, like a man in a dream; and in this state he marched down to the river’s bank.

They had not been together for a full minute when the stout general threw back his head, looking straight in his face; and then he stepped first one, then another, fat little pace backward, and poked his cane right at the ribs of the plump little lieutenant, then closing with him, he shook both Puddock’s hands in both his, with a hearty peal of laughter.

Then he took Puddock under his arm. Puddock had to stoop to pick up his hat which the general had dislodged. And so the general walks him slowly towards the house; sometimes jogging his elbow a little under his ribs; sometimes calling a halt and taking his collar in his finger and thumb, thrusting him out a little, and eyeing him over with a sort of swagger, and laughing and coughing, and whooping, and laughing again, almost to strangulation; and altogether extraordinarily boisterous, and hilarious, and familiar, as Cluffe thought, who viewed this spectacle from the avenue.

Mr. Sterling would not have been quite so amused at a similar freak of Mrs. Hidleberg’s — but our honest general was no especial worshipper of money — he was rich, too, and his daughter, well dowered, was about to marry a peer, and beside all this, though he loved ‘Sister Becky,’ her yoke galled him; and I think he was not altogether sorry at the notion of a little more liberty.

At the same moment honest Peter Brien, having set his basket of winter greens down upon the kitchen-table, electrified his auditory by telling them, with a broad grin and an oath, that he had seen Lieutenant Puddock and Aunt Rebecca kiss in the garden, with a good smart smack, ‘by the powers, within three yards of his elbow, when he was stooping down cutting them greens!’ At which profanity, old Mistress Dorothy, Aunt Rebecca’s maid, was so incensed that she rose and left the kitchen without a word. The sensation there, however, was immense; and Mistress Dorothy heard the gabble and laughter fast and furious behind her until she reached the hall.

Captain Cluffe was asking for Aunt Rebecca when Puddock and the general reached the hall-door, and was surprised to learn that she was not to be seen. ‘If she knew ’twas I,’ he thought, ‘but no matter.’

‘Oh, we could have told you that; eh, Puddock?’ cried the general; ‘‘tisn’t everybody can see my sister today, captain; a very peculiar engagement, eh, Puddock?’ and a sly wink and a chuckle.

Cluffe smiled a little, and looked rather conscious and queer, but pleased with himself; and his eyes wandered over the front windows hastily, to see if Aunt Becky was looking out, for he fancied there was something in the general’s quizzing, and that the lady might have said more than she quite intended to poor little Puddock on the subject of the gallant mediator; and that, in fact, he was somehow the theme of some little sentimental disclosure of the lady’s. What the plague else could they both mean by quizzing Cluffe about her?

Puddock and he had not gone half-way down the short avenue, when Cluffe said, with a sheepish smile:

‘Miss Rebecca Chattesworth dropped something in her talk with you, Puddock, I see that plain enough, my dear fellow, which the general has no objection I should hear, and, hang it, I don’t see any myself. I say, I may as well hear it, eh? I venture to say there’s no great harm in it.’

At first Puddock was reserved, but reco............