She waited some time for the next bulletin and when it came it was short. "The devil's own snowstorm greeted our arrival here--Scutari. I've seldom seen it worse in Aberdeenshire. The north wind blew big guns, we were unable to disembark, and half of us--including yours truly--were sea-sick. Doing nothing, even without enough to eat, doesn't suit Marmaduke Muir. The barracks here are huge; they will hold eighteen thousand troops, they say. I know one unit of a thousand--only about seven hundred and fifty I fear now--that would be right glad to go anywhere else; anywhere where there was something to be done. Nigh four months since we left Portsmouth, and, for all the use I've been, I might as well have enjoyed the trout-fishing on the Don." That was the third of the slender envelopes marked "From the British Army in the East" which reached her. The next was sealed with a black seal and was full of pious reflections upon death; for the news of his elder brother Pitt's demise had just reached Marmaduke and roused his sense of responsibilities. "In times like these," he wrote, "one feels the impotence of man--and woman also," he added, "though you, my dear Marrion, had a wonderful knack of clarifying the muddles. Andrew does not darn my stockings half so well as you did." But the beauties of Varna got the better of his reflections and he drew a picture of it that filled Marrion with doubts and delight. "It is as beautiful as Scotland--the lakes stretching away into the scarped woody hills, the sea--so calm that the clouds reflected seem to sail on it--almost motionless on the shore. The green sward down to the very edge of the lakes, carpeted with flowers, especially with irises. They call it the flower of death in India, and I noticed an evening mist, thick enough almost to be called a fog, rising at sunset from the low levels and enveloping the town. It did not augur well for health. As for the town itself, words fail. It is Gallipoli over again with fewer drains and more filth. Yet to look at it in the clear sunlight, it is the new Jerusalem. And there are angels in it, Marmie; the sort of angels you love. I really think these little Turks and Turkesses are the prettiest children I ever saw. Their little yellow faces and big brown eyes make one think of Rubens' cherubs seen through smoked glasses like an eclipse! And an eclipse of most things it is often for the poor little beggars. At Kustendji, the other day, Hyde Parker found a couple of pure babies on the battlefield where the Russians had been bombarding. They're the pets of his frigate now; but there are dozens of them who have no such luck, and dozens more, I expect, who die of sheer hunger because we locusts of war eat up everything. There will be ninety thousand of us here before long, and for how long? God knows! Five months and nothing done! I wonder how you would stand it? But it wouldn't happen if you were at the head of affairs. You'd manage somehow. I feel it in my bones.