I began to associate Berkeley—groundlessly, certainly—with her singular silence. All my former animosity to him returned; but, for the personal safety of the survivor, our strangely deferred meeting could not take place till we found ourselves in the vicinity of the enemy. I feared, too, that he might discover how completely she had ignored—or, to all appearance, forgotten—my existence. To me there was pure gall in the idea that he should have cause for triumph in suspecting it. I constantly wore her engagement ring—the pearl with the blue enamel. Did she gaze on my Rangoon diamond as frequently as I did on the tiny gold hoop which once encircled her finger, and had hence become a holy thing to me? I was now beginning to fear that she did not. The past had but one feature, one which every thought and memory seemed metaphorically to hinge; and the future but one object—the same—around which every hope was centred—Louisa. Viâ the Bosphorus, the mail steamers came puffing regularly into Varna Bay. They seemed to bring letters to all but me, and gradually my heart became filled by anxiety and fear. Louisa might be ill—_dead_! I thrust aside that thought as impossible; I must have heard of so terrible a calamity from Cora, or from Wilford, who was in constant correspondence with his sister. Her answer to my Gallipoli letter might have miscarried. Why her letter alone? Those of my uncle and of cousin Cora came at the requisite time, and in course of post. Could it actually be that Louisa was forgetting me? Her last look—her eyes so full of grief—her last kiss, so full of tremulous tenderness, forbade this fear, and yet it was passing strange that neither Cora nor Sir Nigel ever mentioned her in their correspondence with me. I frequently prayed that her love might be as lasting in her as it proved agonizing to me. Studhome knew my secret. To conceal from him that I was miserable was impossible, but honest Jack’s advice "to take heart of grace—to remember that there were as good fish in the sea as ever came out of it, that— "’There were maidens in Scotland more lovely by far, Who would gladly be bride to the young Lochinvar,’" and a great deal more to the same effect and purpose, proved but sorry comfort and counsel. On a Saturday evening I had tiffed with him in his tent. We had no second parade or anything to do. He vowed that he was tired of his studies, which generally consisted of the _Racing Calendar_, Hart’s "Annual Army List," "White’s Farriery," and the "Field Exercise and Evolutions for the Cavalry," varied by _Punch_ and _Bell’s Life_, so we ordered our horses, and rode to Varna, the variety and unwonted bustle of which afforded the means of amusement and relief, after the quiet and monotony of our camp in the green wooded vale of Aladyn.