But Trooper Little, once the Hon. Bertie Le Grand, thought “Poor lady!”

* * * * *

The heart of Damocles de Warrenne bounded within him, stood still, and then seemed like to burst.

“Oh, Lucille!  Oh, darling!” he groaned, as he kissed her fiercely and then endeavoured to thrust her from him.  “Jump into your carriage quickly. Lucille—­Don’t ... Here ...!  Not here....  People are looking ... You ...! A common soldier....  Let me go.  Quick....  Your carriage....  Some one may—­”

“Let you go, darling ...!  Now I have found you....  If you say another word I’ll serve you as you served the Haddock.  I’ll hang on to your arm right along the Leas.  I’ll hang round your neck and scream if you try to run away.  This is poetic justice, darling.  Now you know how our Haddock felt. No—­I won’t leave go of your sleeve.  Where shall we go, dearest darling Dammy.  Dare you drive up and down the Front with me in Amelia Harringport’s sister’s young man’s mother’s victoria? oh, my darling Dam....” and Lucille burst into happy tears.

“Go up that winding path and I’ll follow in a minute.  There will be secluded seats.”

“And you’ll bolt directly I leave go of you?...  I—­”

“No, darling, God knows I should if I were a man, but I can’t, I can’t.  Oh, Lucille!”

“Stay here,” cried the utterly fearless, unashamed girl to the unspeakably astounded coachman of the mother of the minor Canon who had the felicity of being Amelia Harringport’s sister’s young man, and she strode up the pathway that wound, tree-shaded, along the front of the gently sloping cliff.

In the utter privacy of a small seat-enclosing, bush-hidden half-cave, Damocles de Warrenne crushed Lucille to his breast as she again flung her arms around his neck.

“Oh, Lucille, how could you expose yourself to scandal like that; I ought to be hung for not taking to my heels as you came, but I could not believe my eyes, I thought I was going mad again,” and he shivered.

“What should I have cared if every soul in the world who knows me had arranged himself and herself in rows and ranks to get a good view?  I’d have done the same if Grumper had been beside me in the carriage.  What is the rest of the World to me, beside you, darling?...  Oh, your poor hair, and what is that horrid scar, my dearest?  And you are a ‘2 Q.G.’ are you, and how soon may you marry?  I’m going to disappear from Monksmead, now, just like you did, darling, and I’m coming here and I’m going to be a soldier’s wife.  Can I live with you in your house in barracks, Dammy, or must I live outside, and you come home directly your drill and things are finished?”

Dam groaned aloud in hopeless bitterness of soul.

“Lucille—­listen,” said he.  “I earn one-and tuppence a day.  I may not marry.  If you were a factory-girl or a coster-woman I would not drag you down so.  Apart from that, I am unfit to marry any decent woman.  I am—­what you know I am....  I have—­fits.  I am not—­sound—­normal—­I may go m....”