"Well, there is no general order against its doing so; and old Trecarrel's champagne was excellent. Oh, Lord! I have done all that sort of thing scores of times, and now find there was nothing in it; but Rose Trecarrel has the prettiest ankle I ever saw. "Ah! you're a man of close observation." "Well, I've seen a few in my time, on windy days, at Margate and Brighton especially." "I am not a marrying man, and had I not been hopelessly insolvent since I came into the world, egad! I would pop to Mabel," said Waller, with a sudden earnestness to which the General's champagne perhaps contributed. "Oh! you have got the length of calling her by her Christian name!' "As you do Rose--well, but is it _not_ her name?" "Of course; but----" "But what?" asked Bob Waller, testily; "is a fellow to be everlastingly quizzed in that mess-room style, just because--because"--he stuttered and paused. "What?" said Polwhele, laughing and pointing his black mustaches, which the Line wore in India long before the Crimean war. "Because he has an honest fancy for a girl; and do you know, Jack, I think I _could_ love that girl--seriously now." "Very probably; but do you think she could love you?" "True, I am only a captain, with a small share in an old Cornish mine, and no end of expectations." "It is only being up-country and idleness." "I'd call you out, Jack, only it is not the fashion to treat one's friends so now," retorted Waller, as they reached their quarters in the old fort. "There bangs the evening gun from the Bala Hissa; and now to dress for mess." Some of Polwhele's thoughtless speeches rankled more in the mind of Denzil than he quite cared to show; for he knew that if the idea struck the mind of that confident personage he would propose to Rose Trecarrel in a moment; and Polwhele, he was aware, had a handsome estate partly in Cornwall and partly in Devonshire, and was a most eligible _parti_. _He_, himself, was but a junior subaltern, and he speculated on the years that must inevitably pass ere he could be a captain. Oh, Rose would never wait all that time, and be true. Poor lad--would he? At least he thought so. Long, long did Denzil lie awake that night, after leaving the mess-bungalow, anticipating the meeting of the morrow, and recalling the expression of Rose's clear brown eyes--the touch of her soft hand and her whispered words, while the hungry jackals howled like devils in the compound without; and while, on the metal ghurries of the adjacent cantonment, the sentinels struck the passing hours. He might, had he known the true state of matters, had a sympathetic adviser in Bob Waller, who at that precise time was seated thoughtfully in his quarters--the white-washed room already described--with a leg over each arm of his bamboo chair and his eyes fixed pensively on the ceiling, for he was thinking over Mabel's rare beauty through the medium of a soothing pipe of Cavendish; and once or twice he muttered: