was trying to establish a flirtation with the Agent. Once at Government House she had the honour of sitting next the Viceroy, an alarming but yet delightful eminence. How kind he seemed, how full of friendly talk, how eager to know about her husband and his doings! 'How is your _preux chevalier_?' he said. 'What would become of everything, I wonder, in that stormy corner that he keeps in such good order, but for him? He is one of the people whom I completely trust.' Maud felt her cheek glowing with pleasure, yet the pleasure was not without a sting. Everybody conspired to speak of her husband as some one beyond the usual flight in goodness, chivalry, nobility of soul. Was she behaving as became the wife of such a man? Was she loving, honouring, and obeying in the full spirit of her vow? Was it honourable or right that half-a-dozen foolish lads should be competing for familiarity with her, and a man like Desvoeux be her habitual companion? Ought her husband to hear such things of her? This was the little skeleton which Maud kept locked up, along with many lovely dresses, in her bedroom closet--this the little prick her conscience gave her--this the drop of bitter in the glittering, ambrosial draught of pleasure. She drank it all the same and found it too sweet to put it from her lips. CHAPTER XXXIV. BAD TIMES IN THE PLAINS. Where nature sickens, and each air is death. While the fortunate Elysians were thus bravely keeping up their own and one another's spirits by a round of gaieties, the people in the Plains were busy with a round of work of quite a different description. Cholera having broken out, all leave in the infected regiments had been cancelled, and many a luckless officer had come back to his cantonment, grumbling at a curtailed holiday and the stern mandate which recalled him just as he had reached the snow scenery of which he had dreamed for months, or established himself in some happy hunting-ground for a two months' campaign against ibex or bison. Back they all came, however, poor fellows, to take their equal chance with rank and file against an enemy of whom even the bravest men are not ashamed to be afraid.