The pleasant visit ended. Sutton had to go off to his camp, a tiny hill station some three thousand feet above the sea, and therefore, as its enemies declared, combining all the drawbacks of hill and plain. Here they were to stay till June, when Sutton was to have his leave and to take his bride up to Elysium for the rest of the summer. Even this prospect had not enabled Maud to bear the parting from her friend with equanimity. 'I wish--I wish,' she had said, wistfully, with the tears in her eyes--'what do I wish? If only, dear Felicia, I could never go away from you!' Felicia bade her farewell with an aching heart, and some dark misgivings. They were not to meet at Elysium, for this year she had determined to establish her children in their little mountain abode at the 'Gully' and to divide her time between them and her husband till he could come up and join them. Then they had resolved to take a little march into the interior, where Felicia might get some new sketches and enlarge her stock of ferns; while Vernon might have a few days' shooting, unharassed by a pursuing train of official cares and correspondence. The Hill Camp proved a fearful place; worse, far worse, than anything on the march. It was only to be endured till June, happily, but still it looked terrific. The long lines of huts; the horrible little abodes which were honoured by the title of Officers' Quarters; the gaunt, hideous, treeless hills; the valleys blazing and withered, the dry, blistering scene uncheered by a single streamlet; the dusty plateau, where the soldiers were eternally marching, galloping, cannonading--all the outer world seemed dull, parched, repulsive. There was no other lady in the camp but one, the surgeon's wife, large and dark and hot, and, as Maud felt, horribly realising one's ideas of an ogress. This lady used to come and see her, and sit gossiping and questioning and telling long stories, and shaking a great bird of paradise feather in her head, till she made Maud's life a burthen to her. Then, after about three of these visitations, which Maud imagined that she had endured with angelic sweetness, the lady, for some inscrutable cause, took offence, and when next they met out of doors flung up her head, brandished the bird of paradise feather in the most menacing and defiant manner, and had evidently proclaimed a social war of an altogether implacable order. 'O Jem! what _have_ I done?' said Maud with a shudder, as she passed. 'Something unforgivable evidently,' said Sutton; 'we must make peace at once, because Surgeon Crummins could poison us all, if he pleased, next time we happen to be poorly and to fall into his hands. Let us have them to dinner.'