Page 468 - for-the-term-of-his-natural-life

the pleasure of making you acquainted with her this eve-
ning at the Commandant’s. Mr. McNab, whom you know,
is in command at the Neck, and cannot leave, or you would
have seen him.’
‘I have planned a little party,’ said Burgess, ‘but I fear that
it will not be so successful as I could wish.’
‘You wretched old bachelor,’ said Frere; ‘you should get
married, like me.’
‘Ah!’ said Burgess, with a bow, ‘that would be difficult.’
Sylvia was compelled to smile at the compliment, made
in the presence of some twenty prisoners, who were car-
rying the various trunks and packages up the hill, and
she remarked that the said prisoners grinned at the Com-
mandant’s clumsy courtesy. ‘I don’t like Captain Burgess,
Maurice,’ she said, in the interval before dinner. ‘I dare say
he did flog that poor fellow to death. He looks as if he could
do it.’
‘Nonsense!’ said Maurice, pettishly; ‘he’s a good fellow
enough. Besides, I’ve seen the doctor’s certificate. It’s a
trumped-up story. I can’t understand your absurd sympa-
thy with prisoners.’
‘Don’t they sometimes deserve sympathy?’
‘No, certainly not—a set of lying scoundrels. You are al-
ways whining over them, Sylvia. I don’t like it, and I’ve told
you before about it.’
Sylvia said nothing. Maurice was often guilty of these
small brutalities, and she had learnt that the best way to
meet them was by silence. Unfortunately, silence did not
mean indifference, for the reproof was unjust, and nothing