"L'infidelité du corps, ou l'infidelité du c[oe]ur, I care not now which it was; but I am done with her now and for ever," I exclaimed, with a sudden gust of rage, while clasping on my sword.
"Done--so I should think, when she is married."
"But to such a contemptible dotard."
"Well, there is some revenge in that."
"And she could cast me aside like an old garment," said I, lapsing into tenderness again; "I, to whose neck she clung as she did on that evening we parted. There must have been some trickery--some treachery, of which we are the victims!"
"Don't go on in this way, like a moonstruck boy, or, by Jove, the whole regiment will find it out; so calm yourself, for we go to the front in an hour;" and wringing my hand this kind-hearted fellow, whose offhand consolation was but ill-calculated to soothe me, left for his own tent, as he had forgotten his revolver.
I was almost stupefied by the shock. Could the story be real? I looked to the little grate (poor Evans' contrivance) where the charred remains of the Morning Post still flickered in the wind. Was I the same man of an hour ago? "The plains of life were free to traverse," as an elegant female writer says, "but the sunshine of old lay across them no longer. There were roses, but they were scentless--fruits, but they were tasteless--wine, but it had lost its flavour. Well, every created being must come to an hour like this, when he feels there is nothing pleasant to the palate, or grateful to the sense, agreeable to the ear, or refreshing to the heart; when man delights him not and woman still less, and when he is sick of the dream of existence."
To this state had I come, and yet I had neither seen nor heard the last of her.
"Estelle--Estelle!" I exclaimed in a low voice, and my arms went out into vacancy, to fall back on the camp-bed whereon I reclined. Abandoned for another; forgotten it might too probably--nay, must be. I stared up, and looked from the triangular door of the tent over the wilderness of zigzags, the sand-bags, and fascines of the trenches; over the gun-batteries to the white houses and green domes of Sebastopol, and all down the long valley of Inkermann, where the graves of the dead lay so thick and where the Russian pickets were quietly cooking their dinners; but I could see nothing distinctly. The whole features of the scenery seemed blurred, faint, and blended, for my head was swimming, my heart was sick, and all, all this was the doing of Estelle! Did no memory of sweet Winifred Lloyd come to me in my desolation of the heart? None! I could but think of the cold-blooded treachery of the one I had lost. My letter! I suddenly remembered it, and tore it open, thinking that the writer, whose hand, as I have said, I failed to recognise, might cast some light upon the matter; and to my increasing bewilderment, it proved to be from Winifred herself. A letter from her, and to me; what could it mean? But the first few words sufficed to explain.
Craigaderyn, . . . .