"Whew! even beyond _la belle_--" "There, don't mention her at present, please," said I, with a little irritation, which only made him laugh the more. "If you were love-making at Yalta, with three lance-prods in you, there was no malingering anyhow." "I should think not." "And so she was engaged to be married to that Russian bear, Tolstoff," he added, after I had told him the whole of my affair with Valerie. "Yes," said I, with an unmistakable sigh. "I think we are both destined to live and die bachelors," he resumed, in a bantering way; for though Phil had in these matters undergone, at Craigaderyn and elsewhere, "the baptism of fire" himself, he was not the less inclined to laugh at me; for of all sorrows, those of love alone excite the risible propensities. "And so, Phil, the world's a kaleidoscope--always shifting." "Not always _couleur de rose_, though?" "And I am here again!" "Thank God!" said he, as we again shook hands, "Faith, Harry, you must have as many lives as a cat, and so you may well have as many loves as Don Juan; but, _entre nous_, and excuse me, she seems to have been a bit of a flirt, your charming Valerie." "How--why do you think so?" "From all you have told me; moreover every woman to be attractive, should be a little so," replied Caradoc, curling his heavy brown moustache. "I don't think she was; indeed, I am certain she was not. But if this be true, how then about Miss Lloyd; and she is attractive enough?" At the tenor of this retort Phil's face flushed from his Crimean beard to his temples. "There you are wrong," said he, with the slightest asperity possible; "she has not in her character a grain of coquetry, or of that which Horace calls 'the art that is not to be taught by art.' She is a pure-minded and warm-hearted English girl, and is as perfect as all those wives and daughters of England, who figure in the volumes of Mrs. Ellis; and in saying this I am genuine, for I feel that I am praising some other fellow's bride--not mine, God help me!" he added, with much of real feeling. "You have heard nothing of the Lloyds since I left you?" "Nothing." "Well, take courage, Phil; we may be at Craigaderyn one day yet," said I; and he, as if ashamed of his momentary sentimental outburst, exclaimed, with a laugh, "By Jove, now that I have heard all your amours and amourettes, they surpass even those of Hugh Price." "Poor Hugh! his lieutenancy is filled up, I suppose?" "Yes--as another week would have seen your company, for we could not conceive that you were a prisoner at Yalta. Awkward that would have been." "Deucedly so." "But now you must console yourself, old fellow, by seeing what Madame la Colonelle Tolstoff----" "Don't call her by that name, Phil--I hate to hear it!" "By what, then?" "Valerie--anything but the other."