“I do, to my shame, Maud.  He should not be there, I am cooped up here, behind timbers that are almost shot-proof.”

“It will be time for you to go to the front, as you soldiers call it, when there is an enemy to face.  You cannot think there is any danger of an attack upon the Hut this morning.”

“Certainty not.  It is now too late.  If intended at all, it would have been made before that streak of light appeared in the east.”

“Then close the shutter, and I will bring in the lamp, and show you some of my sketches.  We artists are thirsting always for praise; and I know you have a taste, Bob, that one might dread.”

“This is kind of you, dear Maud,” answered the major, closing the shutter; “for they tell me you are niggardly of bestowing such favours.  I hear you have got to likenesses—­little Evert’s, in particular.”

Chapter XVI.

  Anxious, she hovers o’er the web the while,
  Reads, as it grows, thy figured story there;
  Now she explains the texture with a smile,
  And now the woof interprets with a tear.

  Fawcett.

All Maud’s feelings were healthful and natural.  She had no exaggerated sentiments, and scarcely art enough to control or to conceal any of the ordinary impulses of her heart.  We are not about to relate a scene, therefore, in which a long-cherished but hidden miniature of the young man is to play a conspicuous part, and to be the means of revealing to two lovers the state of their respective hearts; but one of a very different character.  It is true, Maud had endeavoured to make, from memory, one or two sketches of “Bob’s” face; but she had done it openly, and under the cognizance of the whole family.  This she might very well do, indeed, in her usual character of a sister, and excite no comments.  In these efforts, her father and mother, and Beulah, had uniformly pronounced her success to be far beyond their hopes; but Maud, herself, had thrown them all aside, half-finished, dissatisfied with her own labours.  Like the author, whose fertile imagination fancies pictures that defy his powers of description, her pencil ever fell far short of the face that her memory kept so constantly in view.  This sketch wanted animation, that gentleness, another fire, and a fourth candour; in short, had Maud begun a thousand all would have been deficient, in her eyes, in some great essential of perfection.  Still, she had no secret about her efforts, and half-a-dozen of these very sketches lay uppermost in her portfolio, when she spread it, and its contents, before the eyes of the original.

Major Willoughby thought Maud had never appeared more beautiful than as she moved about making her little preparations for the exhibition.  Pleasure heightened her colour; and there was such a mixture of frank, sisterly regard, in every glance of her eye, blended, however, with sensitive feeling, and conscious womanly reserve, as made her a thousand times—­measuring amounts by the young man’s sensations—­more interesting than he had ever seen her.  The lamp gave but an indifferent light for a gallery, but it was sufficient to betray Maud’s smiles, and blushes, and each varying emotion of her charming countenance.