There was nothing in Cora’s letter that either flattered my passion or soothed my apprehension. Chillingham Park was never once mentioned, and I could only gather from its abrupt passages and assumed playfulness that she still loved me, tenderly, truly, and hopelessly. There were times when, in her dreams—I learned all this long after, when the present had become the past, and could be recalled no more—there were times when, in imagination, she saw Newton Norcliff, safe from wounds and war, at Calderwood—hers, and hers only—a prize of which none could rob her, not even the brilliant Louisa Loftus; and in her sleep, tears of happiness stole down her poor, pale cheeks. Newton was her cousin, her kinsman, her early playmate and boy lover, her idol, and her hero! What right, then, had this stranger, this Englishwoman, this mere Acquaintance, to seek to rob her of him? But she could not do so now. Newton was Cora’s, and in her dreams he was her lover and her husband, of whom she prayed only to be worthy and more deserving still; and so the poor girl would dream on till morning came—the chill, gusty morning of autumn, when the brown leaves were swept by the cold eastern blast against the windows of the old manor-house, and down the wooded glen; and with that chill morning would come the bitter consciousness that it was all a dream—a dream only, and that he whom she prayed for, and loved so hopelessly, was far, far away in the land of the savage Tartars, exposed to all the perils of the Crimean winter and of the Russian war, and that amid them he was thinking, not of her but of another! But to resume my own story. Berkeley, who had been on the sick list since our arrival at Gallipoli, was reported fit for duty on the morning we embarked for Varna. Most of the British troops were ordered there, or to Scutari, while the mass of our allies were to remain about the coast of the Dardanelles. On this morning, however, I saw the 2nd Zouaves march, as Studhome said, "with all their ladies of light virtue and boxes of heavy baggage," for embarkation; and they presented a stirring spectacle, those swarthy, lithe, and black-bearded fellows, their breasts covered with medals won in battles against Bou Maza, and other sheiks of the Arab tribes, and their faces bronzed almost to negro darkness by the hot sun of Africa.