Despite all she had been told about the antecedents of the latter, Finella blushed scarlet at the vision of what Hammersley--the proud and haughty Vivian Hammersley--would think of his love-affairs being put into the hands of one of his own soldiers; but Dulcie, thinking only of who Florian was, did not see it in this light, or that it would seem like a plain attempt to lure an angry lover back again. 'Unless you wish me to die of shame,' said Finella, after a bitter pause--'shame and utter mortification--you will do no such thing, Dulcie Carlyon!' The latter looked at the speaker, and saw that her dark eyes were flashing dangerously as she added: 'He left me in a gust of rage and suspicion of his own free will; and of his own free will must he return.' 'Will he ever do so, if the cause for that just rage and suspicion, born of his very love for you, is not explained away?' 'No, certainly. He is proud, and so am I; but I will never love anyone else, and mean in time to come to invest in the sleekest of tom-cats and die an old maid,' she added, with a little sob in her throat. 'And meanwhile you are in misery?' 'As you see, Dulcie; but I will rather die than fling myself at any man's head, especially at his, through the medium of a letter of yours; but I thank you for the kind thought, dear Dulcie.' So the latter said no more on the subject, yet made up her mind as to what she would do. The circumstance that both their lovers, so dissimilar in rank and private means, were serving in the same regiment, facing the same dangers, and enduring the same hardships, formed a kind of sympathetic tie between these two girls, who could share their confidences with each other alone, though their positions in life, by present rank and their probable future, were so far apart. They never thought of how young they were, or that, if both their lovers were slain or never seen by them again through the contingencies of life, others would come to them and speak of love, perhaps successfully. Such ideas never occurred, however. Both were too romantic to be practical; and both--the rich one and the poor one--only thought of the desolate and forlorn years that stretched like a long and gloomy vista before them, with nothing to look forward to, and no one to care for, unless they became Sisters of Charity; and Finella, with all her thousands, sometimes spoke bitterly of doing so. CHAPTER XIII. THE EVENING OF GINGHILOVO. Much about the time that the conversation we have just recorded was taking place between the two fair equestriennes, the subject thereof, then with the troops in the laager of Ginghilovo, was very full of the same matter they had in hand--himself and his supposed wrongs.