“You won’t be likely to have to go abroad directly you join your Regiment, will you?”

“I shall try for the Indian Army or else for a British Regiment in India,” was the somewhat sullen answer.

“Dam!  What ever for?”

“More money and less expenses.”

“Dam!  You mercenary little toad!  You grasping, greedy hog!...  Why!  I thought....”

Lucille gazed straight and searchingly at her life-long friend for a full minute and then rose to her feet.

“Come to tea,” she said quietly, and led the way to the big lawn where, beneath an ancient cedar of Lebanon, the pompous Butterton and his solemn satellite were setting forth the tea “things”.

Aunt Yvette presided at the tea-table and talked bravely to two woolly-witted dames from the Vicarage who had called to consult her anent the covering of a foot-stool “that had belonged to their dear Grandmamma”.

("’Time somebody shot it,” murmured Dam to Lucille as he handed her cup.)

Anon Grumper bore down upon the shady spot; queer old Grumper, very stiff, red-faced, dapper, and extremely savage.

Having greeted the guests hospitably and kindly he confined his subsequent conversation to two grunts and a growl.

Lucille and Damocles could not be said to have left the cane-chaired group about the rustic tables and cake-stands at any given moment.  Independently they evaporated, after the manner of the Cheshire Cat it would appear, really getting farther and farther from the circle by such infinitely small degrees and imperceptible distances as would have appealed to the moral author of “Little by Little”.  At length the intervening shrubbery seemed to indicate that they were scarcely in the intimate bosom of the tea-party, if they had never really left it.

“Come for a long walk, Liggy,” remarked Dam as they met, using an ancient pet-name.

“Right-O, my son,” was the reply.  “But we must start off mildly.  I have a lovely feeling of too much cake.  Too good to waste.  Wait here while I put on my clod-hoppers.”

The next hour was the Hour of the lives of Damocles de Warrenne and Lucille Gavestone—­the great, glorious, and wonderful hour that comes but once in a lifetime and is the progenitor of countless happy hours—­or hours of poignant pain.  The Hour that can come only to those who are worthy of it, and which, whatever may follow, is an unspeakably precious blessing, confuting the cynic, shaming the pessimist, confounding the atheist, rewarding the pure in heart, revealing God to Man.

Heaven help the poor souls to whom that Hour never comes, with its memories that nothing can wholly destroy, its brightness that nothing can ever wholly darken.  Heaven especially help the poor purblind soul that can sneer at it, the greatest and noblest of mankind’s gifts, the countervail of all his cruel woes and curses.