"Come, Harry, don't laugh--in that fashion at least," said Caradoc. "I've some brandy here," he added, unslinging his canteen, "I got from a confiding little vivandière of the 10th Regiment, Infanterie de Ligne. Don't mix it with the waters of Marah, the springs of bitterness, but take a good caulker neat, and keep up your heart. Varium et mutabile semper--you know the last word is feminine. That is it, my boy--nothing more. Even the wisest man in the world, though he dearly loved them, could never make women out; and I fear, Harry, that you and I are not even the wisest men in the Welsh Fusileers. And now as a consolation,
"'And that your sorrow may not be a dumb one,
Write odes on the inconstancy of woman.'"
"I loved that girl very truly, very honestly, and very tenderly, Phil," said I, in a low voice, and heedless of how he had been running on; "and she kissed me when I left her, as I then thought and hoped a woman only kisses once on earth. In my sleep I have had a foreshadowing of this. Can it be that the slumber of the body is but the waking of the soul, that such thoughts came to me of what was to be?"
"The question is too abstruse for me," said Caradoc, stroking his brown beard, which was now of considerable length and volume; "but don't worry yourself, Harry; you have but tasted, as I foresaw you would, of the hollow-heartedness, the puerile usages, the petty intrigues, and the high-born snobbery of those exclusives 'the upper ten thousand.' Don't think me republican for saying so; but 'there is one glory of the sun and another of the moon,' as some one writes; 'and there is one style of beauty among women which is angelic, and another which is not,' referring, I presume, to beauty of the spirit. We were both fated to be unlucky in our loves," continued Caradoc, taking a vigorous pull at the little plug-hole of his canteen, a tiny wooden barrel slung over his shoulder by a strap; "but do take courage, old fellow, and remember there are other women in the world in plenty."
"But not for me," said I, bitterly.
"Tush! think of me, of my affair--I mean my mistake with Miss Lloyd."
"But she never loved you."
"Neither did this Lady Estelle, now Countess of Aberconway" (I ground my teeth), "love you."
"She said she did; and what has it all come to? promises broken, a plight violated, a heart trod under foot."
"Come, come; don't be melodramatic--it's d--d absurd, and no use. Besides, there sounds the bugle for orders, and we shall have to relieve the trenches in an hour. So take another cigar ere you go."