in a _tête-à-tête_ with himself. True-hearted and dignified, with her pure affection fixed upon another, she was not a person to descend to coquetry for the mere pleasure of a conquest, and she clung to the General for the purpose of avoiding the Major, till old Bounce became convinced that she was to add another name to the list of victims who had already succumbed before his many fascinations. The idea had been some time nascent in his mind, and as it now grew and spread, and developed itself into a certainty, his old heart warmed with a thrill he had not felt since the reign of the widow at Cheltenham, and he made the agreeable in his own way by pointing out to Mary all the peculiarities and arrangements of a barrack-yard, interspersed with many abrupt exclamations and voluminous personal anecdotes. Major D’Orville hovered round them the while, and perhaps the very difficulty of addressing his former love enhanced the charm of her presence and the fascination against which he struggled. It is amusing to see a thorough man of the world, one accustomed to conquer and enslave where he is himself indifferent, awkward as the veriest schoolboy, timid and hesitating as a girl, where he is _really_ touched--though woman-- “Born to be controlled, Stoop to the forward and the bold.” She thereby gauges with a false measure the devotion for which she pines. Would she know her real power, would she learn where she is truly loved, let her take note of the averted eye, the haunting step, ever hovering near, seldom daring to approach, the commonplace remark that shrinks from the one cherished topic, and above all the quivering voice, which, steady and commanding to the world beside, fails only when it speaks to her. Mary Delaval might have noted this had her heart not been in Kaffirland, or had the General allowed her leisure to attend to anything but himself. “Look ye, my dear Mrs. Delaval, our stables in India were ventilated quite differently. Climate? how d’ye mean? climate makes no difference--why, I’ve had the Kedjerees picketed in thousands round my tent. What? D’Orville, you’ve been on the Sutlej--’gad, sir, your fellows would have been astonished if I’d dropped among you there.” “And justly so,” quietly remarked the Major; “if I remember right, you were in cantonments more than three thousand miles off.” “Well, at any rate, I taught those black fellows how to look after their nags,” replied the General. “I left them the best-mounted corps in the Presidency, and six weeks after my back was turned they weren’t _worth a row of pins_. Zounds, don’t tell me! jobbing--jobbing--nothing but jobbing! What? No _sore backs_ whilst I commanded them--at least among _the horses_,” added our disciplinarian, reflectively; “can’t say as much with regard to the _men_. But there is nothing like a big stick for a nigger--so let’s go and see the riding-school.”