"Bob Waller, one of ours, a pleasant but sometimes supercilious fellow, asked me one evening in the mess bungalow, if 'my people were from the Channel Islands?' "'No,' replied I, colouring, for I always felt that some mystery existed about us; 'but why do you ask?' "'The name sounds like a French one,' replied Waller. "'We are connected somehow with Montreal.' "'Oh, that explains it,' rejoined Waller. "'There is nothing to explain,' said I, angrily. "'Think not?--well--have a cigar?' "I roughly, perhaps, declined it, so Waller returned to the charge by saying-- "'Your father was once in the Cornish Light Infantry, you say?' "'Yes--a captain--some twenty years ago.' "'Strange. I have looked all through the Army Lists, and can find no such name in the corps.' "This assertion exasperated me (I afterwards found it correct), and I challenged him to meet me the next morning in a grove of peepul trees, outside the cantonments; but duelling days are over--the affair got wind, and each of us was placed under arrest within his own compound till we exchanged mutual promises. Bob Waller and I are excellent friends now, and at the moment I am writing, he is sitting opposite me in his shirt and drawers, for we are having a glass of brandy-pawnee--the alcohol with water--and a couple of Chinsworah cheroots together; and I must close now, to catch the dauk-boat--as we call the mail." This was Denzil's last letter, and after its arrival the weeks continued to roll monotonously on, and still found Sybil watching, with unwearied and unrepining zeal, by what she knew to be a bed of death. Constance could speak but little, and then only to murmur her fears and prayers for the future of her daughter. CHAPTER XXVII. ALONE! At last there came an evening which Sybil was never to forget. She had been, for the tenth and last time, at the nearest market-town, where, in the shop windows of a druggist, who combined the dispensing of medicines with groceries, and the cares of a circulating library with those of a post office, she had been fain to display some of her sketches for sale, that she might procure certain little comforts for her ailing mother in their penury. All had been offered to the local public in succession, even to that one which pourtrayed the lonely tarn and rock-pillar, where she had first met Audley, when he came to apologise for his dog's intrusion (why keep such a souvenir now?), and all had been offered in vain. Pleased with the girl's beauty and sweetness of manner, the shopman willingly enough displayed her productions (as decorations, perhaps) in his windows; and there they had grown yellow, blistered, and fly-blown, till they were completely spoiled. Each market-day she had hoped that some enterprising Hobnail or Chawbacon might fancy one of her sketches of some well-known locality, to ornament his dwelling, but only to be disappointed, for art seemed to be sorely at a discount in the land of Tre, Pol, and Pen.