"I know her style perfectly," resumed Polwhele, oddly enough proceeding to crush the unuttered thought; "so does Burgoyne; so do Grahame and Ravelstoke, of the 37th, and ever so many more. She asked you tenderly about animal magnetism--showed you the whiteness of her ungloved hand, and asked you, no doubt, about the trimming of her dress; but you were to be friends--the dearest friends only, and all that sort of thing." Poor Denzil was petrified; but these words were partly effecting a cure, and he strove to laugh. "Don't quiz me, Jack," said he; "but, upon my soul, I could be guilty of any folly for that girl--yet it would be madness, you know. What would the General say, and the mess think and say, too?" "I don't precisely catch your meaning,--folly and madness are pretty synonymous in a matrimonial sense; but what did you think of committing yourself to? a proposal--eh?" Denzil did not reply; he could only sigh and smoke viciously. "Take your wine, old fellow, and don't bother about it," said Waller, who had just begun to listen. "I nearly went mad for love myself in my first red coat; but the Colonel saved me by detachment duty; and when last I saw my inamorata, after seven years of matrimony, her figure quite spoiled for waltzing, and a squad of little squalling infantry about her, I laughed at my escape." Denzil remembered the bantering remarks of the cavalry officer at the band-stand; and their estimate of Rose seemed to tally unpleasantly with that of Polwhele. "Fool that I have been!--yet could I help it?" he thought. "Could I help doing so again--though she is one that makes of love a jest and a scoff?" He felt that she had lured him into a passionate declaration merely to cast him off wantonly and laugh at him, perhaps, with Audley Trevelyan. She might not care for him, and yet dislike to see him, care for _another_. Hence rage prompted him one moment to try and fall in love with some other girl (there was not much choice in the cantonment, certainly), and the next he felt cynically disposed to hate her and all womankind. Anon that emotion would pass away, and he felt himself still her very slave, who would plead for a word, a glance, or smile. To abstain from visiting as before would soon excite remark; and yet to resume his visits would be to see, with bitterness and humiliation, another too palpably preferred, where he had deemed himself the chosen favourite. "And is it actually true that Waller is booked at last?" said Polwhele. "Deuce! how can I tell?" replied Denzil, curtly, blowing away a ring of smoke. "It may be all gossip--for he is one whom hitherto the female world have found impossible to entrap; but here comes Trevelyan," he added, as the Hindoo servant placed lighted wax candles on the table, and Audley entered, looking, as Denzil thought, provokingly handsome, cool, self-possessed, and fashionable in bearing.