She was ashamed as yet to consult her _Dressmakers' Album_, even with the aid of Emily and Mademoiselle Florine, anent the most becoming fashion of mourning; but to-morrow she would certainly do so. '_Assurement, oui!_' thought Florine. Anger and no small degree of contempt were in the heart of Bella as she quitted the park gates of Wilmothurst, with a kind of dull and sodden despair mingling therein, as she drove her ponies home in the February twilight to her father's house that overlooked the village green, and she thought how true were the words of Wordsworth of 'Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.' CHAPTER VII. 'OH, FOR A HORSE WITH WINGS!' Jerry lay long when we left him last in a state of semi-unconsciousness, thoughts of his past life rather than of his present most perilous and deplorable predicament hovering in his mind. He sometimes imagined himself at the mess, and heard the voices and saw the faces of Goring, Dalton, Frank Fleming, and others; anon he was in the Long Valley at Aldershot skirmishing with his company, or riding a hurdle-race by Twesildown Hill. Then came dreams of the ball at Wilmothurst and of Bella Chevenix in all her beauty, and his cold, pale, passionless mother. Again he was in the playing-fields at Eton--again chosen stroke of the Oxford boat. All these floated before him with an overwhelming sense of pain in his head, as once again he struggled back to the world and a full sense of the awful horror of his situation came upon him. Thankful we may be that, as Pope has it, 'Heaven from all creatures hides the book of Fate, All but the page prescribed, their present state.' The prospect of Jerry's future made his heart seem to die within him. The sun was shining brightly now, and save the loud hum of insect life no sound was in the air or around him. A heavy odour of burnt wood and of moist thatch came upon the passing wind from where the fires of the past night were still smouldering in Coomassie, and once more staggering up Jerry looked around him. He was alone--left in the bush to perish; and his comrades, where were they? Miles on the happy homeward march to the coast, with the swollen rivers all unbridged and impassable in their rear! He saw it all--he felt it all, and knew that he was a lost man. Feeble, defenceless, and single-handed he would fall a victim to the first savage and infuriated Ashantee he met, and his skull would soon be laid as an ornament--a royal trophy--at the foot of the king. A heavy moan escaped poor Jerry; but the love of life, the instinct of self-preservation is strong in human nature, and his first thought was to endeavour to follow the army.