With all her constitutional coquetry, she was not without a certain emotion, of compunction at times for the part she had played with Denzil. Of all the admirers she possessed, he had seemed the most earnest, the most bewildered by her beauty, and the most true; but then, as she said to Mabel, "he was so young, and, poor fellow, only a subaltern, so what did it matter in the long run, a little trifling with him, when it amused her, and Cabul had been so dull." "Going to India to be married," said Mabel, "of course means going there to be married well. Trevelyan is only a subaltern, too." "But the son and heir of Lord Lamorna; so one may cast one's hawks at him." "And Polwhele is only a subaltern." "But with a place that spreads from Cornwall into Devonshire. I shall not make a fool of myself, Mab--yet I shall marry for love, and love only, if I marry at all," said Rose, as her white fingers wreathed up the shining ripples of her hair before retiring for the night. "Going out" was then one of the matrimonial institutions of Anglo-Indian society; but the P. and O. liners, with the Overland Route, have knocked that institution on the head, or nearly so. "I told you how it would be, old fellow," said Polwhele to Denzil, who was sad and sombre; "she affects Trevelyan now, and we are all at a discount now, even the cavalry men." "But Trevelyan has come back to India a lord's son, and is on papa's staff. A deuced fine thing it must be to wake up some morning and find oneself famous in that fashion," said Burgoyne of the 37th, ignorant of how galling his remarks were to Denzil. And so several days of constant excitement were passed in the cantonments, yet no definite plan as to the future was formed, whether to risk a retreat through Khyber Pass, or throw the whole force into the Bala Hissar, and defend it to the last gasp, as more than once General Trecarrel had urged at the council of war, but urged in vain. CHAPTER XV. CHRISTMAS AT CABUL. The state of suspense endured by our whole force in Cabul, especially those men who had wives and families, was fully shared by Waller, whose chief anxiety was Mabel Trecarrel; yet it could not repress his great flow of animal spirits, and thus his bungalow was always the resort of a few happy heedless fellows, who had no particular care but to kill time when not killing the Afghans, a resource that was yet to come. Somehow the world reproduces itself everywhere, and though provisions were scant and short, and shot and shell were in plenty and to spare, in the crowded cantonments of Cabul, there were yet space and leisure for fun and flirtation--even scandal and gossip. It was Christmas-time there too, but, save the blasts of snow that came from the hills of Kohistan, how unlike our Christmas-time at home!