"Soldier still—of course."
"But where?"
"In India."
"In India!" she exclaimed, with a depth of interest that made Roland's heart beat wildly; "oh, how far, far away!"
"Far away from you;—oh, Miss Darnel—Aurelia!" His heart was rushing to his head.
At that moment a visitor, Colonel Smash, of U.S. army, was announced, and Roland withdrew, leaving unsaid all that he ought to have said—that she expected him to say, and what he would have said, but for the secret of that accursed cabinet of Scindia.
Could she have looked into his heart and read his thoughts, through the window which Vulcan wished had been placed in every human breast!
Both Aurelia and Madame Darnel had a right to expect something more to develop itself from the visit of Roland; but he felt himself a very craven, and retired, leaving her with the most absurd of her many admirers, Colonel Ithurial Smash, a long-legged, hard-featured, and most ungainly New Yorker, whose rivalry was too contemptible for Roland's consideration, though he did marvel whether one could "possibly parade a fellow," for interrupting one's conversation with his cousin—for in this degree of relationship the "Colonel" somehow stood to Aurelia Darnel.