"When I told him I saw by his face, even before he spoke, that I
had been wrong. He knew nothing whatever of it. Well, miss, he
forgave me--forgave me wholly. He told me that he should never
mention it to a soul, and as he has never mentioned it even to you,
you may see how well he has kept his word. I wanted to leave the
regiment. I felt that I could never mix with my comrades, knowing
as I did that I had tried to murder their favourite officer. But
the Major would not hear of it. He insisted that I should stay,
and, even more, he promised that as soon as I was out of hospital I
should be his servant, saying that as the son of an old tenant, he
would rather have me than anyone else. You can well imagine, then,
Miss Greendale, how willingly I would have given my life for him,
and that when the chance came I gladly faced odds to save him.
"Before that I had come to learn who the man was. It was a letter
from my father that first gave me the clue; he mentioned that
another gentleman had left the neighbourhood and gone abroad, just
at the time that Major Mallett did. He was a man who had once made
me madly jealous by his attentions to Martha at a fete given to his
tenants.
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