in the Army. As for the gentleman ranker, he was
_always_ a scapegrace.

Lord Kitchener's Hundred Thousand would probably
be drawn from a different class, for they were
being directly asked to defend their country. But
even so, at the thought of Jervis Blake becoming a
private, Rose Otway's heart contracted with pain, and,
yes, with vicarious shame. Still, she made up her
mind, there and then, that she would not give him up,
that she would write to him regularly, and that as
far as was possible they would remain friends.

How comforted she would have been could an angel
have come and told her with what eyes England was
henceforth to regard her "common soldiers."

Rose Otway was very young, and, like most young
things, very ignorant of life. But there was, as Miss
Forsyth had shrewdly said, a great deal in the girl.
Even now she faced life steadily, unhelped by the
many pleasant illusions cherished by her mother. Rose
was as naturally reserved as her mother was naturally
confiding, and Mrs. Otway was therefore far more
popular in their little world than her daughter.

Rose, however, was very pretty, with a finished,
delicately fresh and aloof type of beauty which was
singularly attractive to the intelligent and fastidious.
And so there had already appeared, striking across the
current of their placid lives, more than one acute observer
who, divining certain hidden depths of feeling
in the girl's nature, longed to probe and rouse them.
But so far such attempts, generally undertaken by
men who were a good deal older than Rose Otway,
had failed to inspire anything but shrinking repugnance
in their object.

[[108]]

p107 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p108w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p109

v?