For Mrs Lawless is not a woman that the most faithful husband in creation could look at without some degree of interest, and Colonel Dunstan being guileless of harm, has expressed his admiration of her in the most open manner. She is a graceful, fairy-like creature, of two or three-and-twenty, in the flush of youth and beauty, and yet with sufficient knowledge of the world to render her the most charming companion. She has a complexion like a rose leaf, a skin as white as milk, large limpid hazel eyes, a pert nose, a coaxing mouth, and hair of a sunny brown. Fancy such a woman alighting suddenly in an out-of-the-way, dull, dried-up little hole of a station like Mudlianah, and in the midst of some twenty inflammable British officers! You might as well have sent a mitrailleuse amongst them for the amount of damage she did. They were all alight at the first view of her, and hopelessly burned up before the week was over. She is devoted to her Jack, and has in reality no eyes nor thoughts except for him; but he has become a little used to her charms, after the manner of husbands, and so she flirts with the rest of the regiment indiscriminately, and sheds the light of her countenance on all alike, from the colonel downwards. The wives of the 145th Bengal Muftis have received Mrs Lawless but coldly. How can they look into her heart and see how entirely it is devoted to her husband? All they see is her lovely, smiling face, and contrasting it with their own less beautiful and somewhat faded countenances, they imagine that no man can be proof against her fascinations, and jealousy reigns supreme in the 145th with regard to Cissy Lawless. Ethel Dunstan has no need to fear a rival in her colonel’s heart, because she possesses every atom of his affection, and he has proved it by years of devotion and fidelity, but when a woman is once jealous of another, she forgets everything except the fear of present loss. Colonel Dunstan is vexed when he comes in that morning from regimental duty to find his wife pale and dispirited, still more so to hear the tart replies she makes to all his tender questioning. ‘Are you not well, my darling?’ he asks. ‘Quite well, thank you; at least as well as one can be in a hole like Mudlianah. Charlie! where have you been this morning?’ ‘Been, dear? Why, to mess and barracks, to be sure! Where else should I have been?’ ‘There are plenty of houses to call at, I suppose. What is the use of pretending to be so dull? You made a call late last night, if I am not much mistaken!’ ‘Last night! What, after mess? I only went home with Jack Lawless for a minute or two.’ ‘Did you go home with Mr Lawless?’ ‘Yes; at least—he didn’t walk home with me exactly; but he came in soon afterwards.’ ‘Of course she was in bed?’ ‘Oh no, she wasn’t. She was as brisk as a bee. We talked together for a long time.’ ‘So I have heard! In the garden,’ remarks Mrs Dunstan pointedly.