“Honey-bud, darling,” she whispered tearfully, “did you know the Lancers are leaving?”

Ailsa’s eyes flew wide open: 

“Not his regiment!”

“Are there two?”

“Yes,” said Ailsa, frightened.  “That must be the 6th Pennsylvania. . . .  Because I think—­somebody would have told me—­Colonel Arran——­”

She stared through eyes from which the mist of slumber had entirely cleared away.  Then she sprang from her bed to the window: 

“Oh—­oh!” she said half to herself, “he wouldn’t go away without saying something to me!  He couldn’t! . . .  And—­oh, dear—­oh dear, their pennons are swallow-tailed and scarlet!  It looks like his regiment—­it does—­it does! . . .  But he wouldn’t go without speaking to me——­”

Celia turned and looked at her.

“Do you mean Colonel Arran?” And saw that she did not.

For a while they stood there silently together, the soft spring wind blowing over their bare necks and arms, stirring the frail, sheer fabric of their night-robes.

Suddenly the stirring music of cavalry trumpets along the road below startled them; they turned swiftly to look out upon a torrent of scarlet pennons and glancing lance points—­troop after troop of dancing horses and blue-clad riders, their flat forage caps set rakishly, bit and spur and sabre hilt glistening, the morning sun flashing golden on the lifted trumpets.

On they came, on, on, horses’ heads tossing, the ground shaking with the mellow sound of four thousand separate hoofs,—­and passed, troop on troop, a lengthening, tossing wave of scarlet across the verdure.

Then, far away in the column, a red lance pennon swung in a circle, a blue sleeve shot up in salute and adieu.  And Ailsa knew that Berkley had seen her, and that the brightness of the young world was leaving her, centred there in the spark of fire that tipped his lance.

Now she saw her lover turn in his saddle and, sitting so, ride on and on, his tall lance slanting from stirrup boot to arm loop, the morning sun bright across his face, and touching each metal button with fire from throat to belt.

So her lancer rode away into the unknown; and she sat on the edge of her bed, crying, until it was time to go on duty and sit beside the dying in the sick wards.

They brought her his last letter that evening.

“You wicked little thing,” it ran, “if you hadn’t taught me self-respect I’d have tried to run the guard to-night, and would probably have been caught and drummed out or shot.  We’re in a bustle; orders, totally unexpected, attach us to Porter’s Corps, Sykes’s division of regulars.  Warren’s brigade, which includes, I believe, the 5th Zouaves, the 10th Zouaves, 6th Pennsylvania Lancers, and 1st Connecticut Heavy Artillery.

“We’ve scarcely time to get off; our baggage will never be ready, and how we’re going to get to Alexandria and aboard ship is more than I know.