Every morning she had been wont to watch at the open Venetian blinds of their bungalow for the handsome figure of Duncan returning from the early parade, while the sun was yet on the verge of the horizon; and every evening was spent together in delicious idleness--riding on the course, promenading by the band-stand, or wandering among the groves where the baubool breathes an exquisite perfume from its bells of gold, as the oleander does from its clusters of pink and white blossoms, and where the lovely little tailor-bird sews two leaves together and swings in his sweet-scented nest from the bough of some little tree. Hourly she longed for the return of Duncan. She was a petted favourite with Lady Batardeau, who, when calling on her one day, found her asleep under the verandah outside Cameron's bungalow on a long low Indian arm-chair. Thinking how charming the girl-wife looked, Lady Batardeau, in playful kindness, slipped on one of her fingers a rose-diamond ring, which had been in the past time a gift to herself from Sir Bevis, when she valued his gifts more than she had reason to do now; and, having done this, she went softly and laughingly away. To the joy of Alice, Cameron returned suddenly while she was yet puzzling herself to account for the presence of the ring, and for a time, in the happiness of their reunion, she forgot all about it, till he, while toying with her pretty hands, observed it on her finder. 'A magnificent ring, Alice,' said he. 'Where did it come from?' 'That is more than I can tell you.' 'How?' he asked. 'I found that it had been slipped on my finger when I was asleep.' 'By whom?' 'I cannot say, Duncan dear.' On examining the jewel he saw graven on the inside the name of that notorious old _roué_ and Lothario, the brigadier! Lady Batardeau had left the cantonments for awhile, and poor Alice could give no explanation as to how the mysterious ring with the name of Sir Bevis thereon came to be on her finger. Duncan loved her so trustfully, so utterly, that doubt failed for a time to find a place in his gallant heart; but 'gup' had playfully asserted that the old brigadier immensely admired young Mrs. Cameron--he recalled some jests he had heard, and now the poison they breathed was stealing upon his senses, and his face grew white as death. Duncan mistook the genuine confusion of Alice for guilt--her dismay for dread of detection, and the whole affair for a feature in an intrigue. He knew how keen and bitter was scandal in India, and already he saw himself a source of mockery and disgrace, and figuring, perhaps, in the columns of the _Hurkara_! He saw it all now! He had been sent on duty to a distance for some days, as he believed out of his turn, and by the express order of the brigadier.