"So, Devereaux, the mistress of your destiny has proved slippery after all! Laugh at the whole affair, and you'll soon forget all about it. Were I in your place, she might—as the song has it—go to Hong Kong for me."
Denzil knit his brow and reddened with irritation; but, tipping the ashes of his cigar and watching the smoke thereof as it ascended to the straw-roof of the bungalow, Jack resumed, in a voice so low as to be unheard by Waller—
"With a vast amount of espièglerie, Rose, I must admit, has many physical attractions; and, Denzil, you were her pet flirtation for the nonce—every fellow saw that—nothing more. It is a fine thing to talk to a handsome girl about 'elective affinities and the union of souls,' that 'marriages are made in heaven, and not in the money-market' or the shop of some sharping lawyer; but it often grows perilous work for a griff, with a girl like Rose, who cannot care very much for any one."
Denzil still sat smoking in silence, and felt somewhat perplexed by the extreme candour of his brother-officer. In short, he knew not quite how to take it.
"Could she only have been flirting with me?" thought he, and we fear Rose would have answered in the affirmative. "No two persons, I have heard, have exactly the same or correct idea of what flirting is (he had not): talking a deal to a pretty girl, or laughing much with her, are called so; but surely there may be deeper flirting, at times, in silence. Oh! we were not flirting: I loved her—I love her yet—and thought she loved me, when glance met glance, and eye answered to eye the unasked question!"
"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.