"By this road I smoked a last cigar with Jack Polwhele, of ours, and Harry Burgoyne, of the 37th," resumed Waller. He remembered, but he did not care to add, how broadly they had bantered him about Mabel Trecarrel on the evening in question. "And all round here," he resumed, pursuing his own thoughts aloud, "are the scenes of many a pleasant ride and happy drive. Here I betted and lost a box of gloves with the Trecarrels." "You seem to have always been betting on something with those ladies, and with a gentleman's privilege of losing." "It was on the Envoy's blood mare against Jack Polwhele's bay filly, in the race when Daly, of the 4th Dragoons, won the sword given by Shah Sujah," said Waller, colouring a little. "There, by those cypresses, I once met the sisters half fainting, one day, with heat, their palanquin placed in the shade by the gasping dhooley-wallahs; so, at the risk of a brain fever, I galloped to the Char-chowk for a flask of Persian rose-water, fans, and so forth." "The Trecarrels again! By the way, it seems to me," said the other, "that of all the friends you have lost, those two young ladies--one especially----" What the military secretary of General Pollock was about to say, with a somewhat meaning smile, we know not, save that he was heightening the colour of Waller's face by his pause; but a change was given to the conversation by the opportune arrival of Shireen Khan, of the Kuzzilbashes, mounted, as usual, on his tall camel, and accompanied by a few well-appointed horsemen. He had ascertained that "Shakespere Sahib" was the _katib_, or secretary, to the victorious Feringhee general, and had come to tender, through him, his services to the family of the fallen Shah, to the conquerors, to the Queen they served, and, generally, to the powers that were uppermost.