to work out with patience and courage. He had to think of the young wife, whom it might be his blessed fate to claim before he was much older. He could no longer afford to be vague and wavering. The problem of a gentleman-like maintenance must be worked out by him somehow, and without loss of time.
He walked across the Cornish hills in those balmy afternoons of September, full of thought and full of care; happy, yes, ineffably happy in the knowledge of Hilda's love; but care went along with happiness. He had to provide for his beloved. Long and thoughtful self-examination brought him to one positive conclusion about himself. Whatever he was to do in the future, if he were to do it well, must be, in somewise, the thing that he had done in the past. He was a soldier to the marrow of his bones, and it was in military work, or military studies, that he must find his future living.
This was the plan which he worked out for himself during those solitary rambles on the moor, sometimes with gun and dogs, sometimes with no companion save his own thoughts. He would fall back upon the studious habits of his earlier years, work at the science of soldiery as he had worked then. He would take a house in one of the villages on the wild coast of North Cornwall—at Trevena perhaps, in King Arthur's country—some roomy old house with a good garden, and he would take pupils to cram for the military examinations. He knew that he could get on with young men. He had always been popular with the subalterns of his regiment. He would work honestly, conscientiously, devotedly as ever coach or crammer worked since the art of coaching and cramming was first invented. It would be a jog-trot humble kind of life, a life which could never lead to distinction, far from a brilliant future to offer to such a girl as Hilda Heathcote. Yet he told himself that it was such a life as would not be altogether distasteful to her. It was a life in which husband and wife need be but seldom parted, in which all their amusements and relaxations could be shared. They could hunt, and shoot, and ride, and boat together on that wild coast. The conventionalities would cost them very little. Fine clothes, fine living would not be required of them: and in their rustic seclusion they would escape the ghastly struggle to maintain showy appearances; they could afford themselves all the comforts of a homely unpretentious ménage.
Bothwell felt that it was in him to do good and honest work in such a career as this; surely better than sheep-breeding or gold-digging in some savage quarter of the earth, where the intellectual man must gradually sink to the level of his companion brutes. He pictured to himself the tranquil happiness of such a life. The long morning of conscientious work, followed by the afternoon ride or ramble. The summer holiday
