It was impossible for me not to feel lingering in my heart a deep and tender interest for Valerie. She had not deceived or ill-used me; we had simply been separated by the force of circumstances; by her previous troth to Tolstoff, whom I flattered myself she could not love, even if she respected or esteemed him.

That they were married by this time I could scarcely doubt, as she had assured me that she was on "the very eve" of her nuptials (one of those "marriages of convenience," according to Caradoc's book); and if he held a command so high in Sebastopol, there was every reason to conclude she must be with him. In the event of a general assault, I was fully resolved to send my card to headquarters as a volunteer for the storming column, though I knew right well that I dare not allow myself to fall alive, into his hands, at all events; thus the whole situation gave me an additional and more personal interest in the fall and capture of that place than, perhaps, inspired any other man in the whole allied army. What if Tolstoff should be killed? This surmise opened up a wide field for speculation.

Any of those balls that were incessantly poured against the city might send that amiable commander to kingdom come, and if Valerie were left a widow--well, I did not somehow like to think of her as a widow, Tolstoff's especially, yet I was exasperated to think of her, so brilliant, so gentle, and so highly cultured, as the wife of one so coarse and even brutal in bearing, and if he did happen to stand in the way of a bullet, why should he not be killed as well as another; and so I reasoned, so true it is, that "with all our veneering and French polish, the tiger is only half dead in any of us."

If I were again unluckily sent with a flag of truce into Sebastopol, on any mission such as the burial of the dead and removal of the wounded, or so forth, it would, I knew, be certainly violated by Tolstoff, and myself be made prisoner for the affairs at Yalta. Then if such a duty were again offered me, on what plea could I, with honour, decline it? I could but devoutly hope that no such contingency might happen for me again.

Times there were when, brooding over the past, and recalling the strange magnetism of the smile of Valerie, and in the touch of her hand, the contour of her face, her wonderful hair, and pleading winning dark eyes, there came into my heart the tiger feeling referred to, the jealousy that makes men feel mad, wild, fit for homicide or anything; and as hourly "human lives were lavished everywhere, as the year closing whirls the scarlet leaves," I had--heroics apart--a terrible longing to have my left hand upon the throat of Tolstoff, with her Majesty's Sheffield regulation blade in the other, to help him on his way to a better world.

In these, or similar visions and surmises, I ceased to indulge when with Caradoc, as he was wont to quiz me, and say that if I got a wife out of Sebastopol, I should be the only man who gained anything by the war, and even my gain might be a loss; that, like himself, I had twice burned my fingers at the torch of Hymen, and that I should laugh at the Russian episode or loving interlude, as he called it, as there were girls in England whose shoe-strings he was sure she was not fit to tie. Though she had rightly told me that my passion was but a passing fancy, she knew not that it was one fed by revenge and disappointment.

"Lady Estelle may perhaps have destroyed your faith in women," added Phil, "but any way she has not destroyed mine."

"Have you still the locket with the likeness of Winifred Lloyd?" said I.

"Yes--God bless her--she left it with me," he replied, with a kindling eye. How true Phil was to her! and yet she knew it not, and as far as we knew, recked but little of the faith he bore her.

On a Saturday night--the night of that 21st of April, on which we captured the rifle-pits--as we sat in our hut talking over the affair, weary with toil of that incessant firing to which the cannonading at Shoeburyness is a joke, Phil said,

"Let us drink 'sweethearts and wives,' as we used to do in the transport."

"Agreed," said I; and as we clinked our glasses together and exchanged glances, I knew that his thoughts went back to Craigaderyn, even as mine recurred to that moonlight night on the terrace at Yalta.

"You remained with the burial party," said he, after a pause.

"Yes, and I saw something which convinced me that the fewer tender ties we fighting men have, the better for our own peace. An officer of the 19th lay among the dead, a man past forty apparently. A paper was peeping from the breast of his coat; I pulled it out, and it proved to be a letter, received perhaps that morning--a letter from his wife, thrust hastily into his breast, as we marched to the front. A little golden curl was in it, and there was written in a child's hand, 'Cecil's love to dearest papa.' I must own that the incident, at such a time and place, affected me; so I replaced the letter in the poor fellow's breast, and we buried it with him. So papa lies in a rifle-pit, with mamma's letter and little Cecil's lock of hair; but, after all, king Death did not get much of him--the poor man had been nearly torn to pieces by a cannon shot."

"I saw you in advance of the whole line of skirmishers to-day, Harry, far beyond the zigzags."

"I was actually at the foot of the glacis."

"The glacis--was not that madness?" exclaimed Phil.

"The truth is, I did so neither through enthusiastic courage nor in a spirit of bravado. I was only anxious to see if from behind the sap-roller that protected me, my field-glass could enable me to detect among the gray-coated figures at the embrasures, the tall person and grim visage of old Tolstoff."

"By Jove, I thought as much!"

"But I looked in vain, and retired in crab-fashion, the bullets falling in a shower about me the while."

At that moment a knock rung on the door of the hut, and Sergeant Rhuddlan, who acted as our regimental postman, handed a small packet to me.

"The second battalion of the Scots Royals, the 48th, and the 72nd Highlanders have just come in, sir, from Balaclava, and have brought a mail with them," said he, in explanation; and while he was speaking, we heard the sound of drums and bagpipes, half drowned by cheers in the dark, as those in camp welcomed the new arrivals from home, and helped to get them tented and hutted.

"From Craigaderyn!" said I, on seeing the seal--Sir Madoc's antique oval--with the lion's head erased, as the heralds have it.

I had written instantly to the kind old man on my return to camp, and this proved to be the answer by the first mail. On opening the packet I found a letter, and a cigar-case beautifully worked in beads of the regimental colours, red, blue, and gold, with my initials on one side, and those of Winifred Lloyd on the other. Poor Phil Caradoc looked wistfully at the work her delicate hands had so evidently wrought--so wistfully that, but for the ungallantry of the proceeding, I should have presented the case to him. However, he had the simple gratification of holding it, while I read the letter of Sir Madoc, and did so aloud, as being of equal interest to us both. It was full of such warm expressions of joy for my safety and of regard for me personally, that I own they moved me; but some passages proved a little mysterious and perplexing.

"Need I repeat to you, my dear Harry, how the receipt of your letter caused every heart in the Court to rejoice--that of Winny especially? She is more impressionable than Dora, less volatile, and I have now learned why the poor girl refused Sir Watkins, and, as I understand, another."