'I do,' replied Hammersley, remembering the affair of the cards. 'Finella!' said he, as if to himself, 'how her memory haunts me! By Jove, she is a witch, a sorceress!--like that other Finella after whom she told me she is named, and who lived--I don't know when--in the year of the Flood, I think. I thank you from my soul, MacIan, for the sight of this letter, and it will be a further incitement to me to further your interests in every way within my power. Heaven knows how gladly I would betake me to my pen; but this is no time for letter-writing. By daybreak we shall be in our saddles, and on the spur to the front.' Florian saluted his officer and withdrew, leaving him to the full tide of his new thoughts. So she was true to him after all! The whole affair, so black apparently, seemed to be so simply and truthfully explained away by Dulcie's letter that he could not doubt the terrible misconception under which he had laboured, nor did he wish to do so. The tables were completely turned. It was he--himself--who had cruelly wronged, doubted, upbraided, and quitted Finella, and now from him must the reparation come. His mind was full of the repentant, glowing, and gushing letter he would write her, renewing his protestations of love and faith, and imploring her to forgive him; but when could that letter be written and sent to the rear?--for the division advanced by dawn on the morrow, and there would scarcely be a halt, he supposed, till it reached Ulundi. And how could a letter reach her from the Cape at Craigengowan unknown to Lady Fettercairn?--who, he knew but too well, was bitterly opposed to his love for Finella, and for many cogent reasons the adherent of Shafto. How would it all end with them both now? In a runaway marriage too probably, unless he got knocked on the head in Zululand, a process he rather shrank from now, as life seemed to be invested with new attributes, greater hopes, and greater value. Finella's _mignonne_ face came before him; the small, straight nose, with thin, arched nostrils; the proud yet soft hazel eyes, with thin, long lashes; the firm coral lips; the abundant hair of richest brown; and with all these came, too, the memory of her favourite perfume, the faint odour of jasmine that clung to her draperies and laces. In a similar mood to some extent, but without the sense of having aught to explain or a reparation to make, Florian lay in another tent at some little distance, contemplating the contents of a pretty white leather toy, lined with pale blue satin--a case containing a photo--altogether an unsuitable thing for the pocket of a soldier's tunic, or to place in his haversack, it may be among cooked rations, shoe-brushes, and a sponge for pipeclay; but it contained a poor reflection, though delicately tinted, of Dulcie's own sweet face.