Never again did it seem possible that she could take any interest in the life of the world and its daily routine. She was apathetic--careless of what was done with herself or anything around her. Existence and its ties seemed over and done with, yet her present calamity seemed also a kind of dream to her. 'Sometimes in great trouble,' says a writer, 'the brain acts in this way of itself--it will return to events of long ago and recall them vividly, while the immediate moment becomes remote. But the reaction is all the more intense for this mental rest; and when the mind returns to the contemplation of the _present_ it is to see with greater vividness.' 'The embassy massacred to a man!' How often was she to reiterate mentally that appalling line? It was now Mary's evil fortune to feel perhaps--nay, surely--more keenly than her sister had done this new calamity, for poor Ellinor had certainly ceased for a time to love, though she had never failed to respect Robert Wodrow, now deemed also with the dead. All was silent in that pretty villa by the broad and shining Elbe--shining in the light of the moon. The fire glowed in the tall, cylindrical, porcelain stove in a corner of the room; that room ere while decorated and prepared for her and Ellinor so lovingly by Mrs. Deroubigne, and there she lay restless, sleepless, and alone, too bewildered to realise the dire calamity that had befallen her, and been acted in blood and wrath so far, far away, and yet but a few hours ago. The curtains were drawn back, and the red glow of the half-open stove and of the night-light shed a radiance on her surroundings, but whenever her eyes wandered they seemed to see something that was familiar and yet strange to them. Her mind was every way confused and involved, and poor Jack from time to time licked her hand unnoticed. There was, however, always the one prominent idea. Leslie Colville, the one love of her heart, her affianced husband, was dead--killed cruelly--horribly, she doubted not, but in what fashion she knew not, and, fortunately perhaps, should never know. And ever and anon aching memory went back to that sunny noon when she first met him, yet knew him not, as they fished together by the bonnie Birks of Invermay. CHAPTER V. IN THE BALA HISSAR. Our advanced post was in the Kurram Valley--the only part of the Afghan border which had been trodden by the foot of a Briton since the previous Cabul war--a post, the boundary of the so-called 'scientific frontier,' which had been held by a body of our troops, European and native, for some three months during the summer of this eventful year; and all had been suffering more or less from the breathless heat and malaria, dulness, and that growing _ennui_ which a languid game of polo or lawn-tennis (without ladies) utterly failed to ameliorate; and all thought that, as anything exciting was better than nothing, a brush with the Mongols, the Ahmed, or Hassan Keyls would be a relief.