“You have, of course, heard some garbled scandal about his being driven away from home and cut off from Sandhurst by grandfather.  I need not ask if you have believed ill of him and I need not say he is absolutely innocent of any wrong or failure whatever.  He is not an effeminate coward, he is as brave as a lion.  He is a splendid hero, Ormonde, and I want you to simply strangle and kill any man who says a word to the contrary.

“When he left home, he enlisted, and Haddon Berners saw him in uniform at Folkestone where he had gone from Canterbury (cricket week) to see Amelia Harringport’s gang.  Amelia whose sister is to be the Reverend Mrs. Canon Mellifle at Folkestone, you know, met the wretched Haddon being rushed along the front by a soldier and nearly died at the sight—­she declares he was weeping!

“Directly she told me I guessed at once that he had met Dam and either insulted or cut him, and that poor Dam, in his bitter humour and self-loathing had used his own presence as a punishment and had made the Haddock walk with him!  Imagine the company of Damocles de Warrenne being anything but an ennobling condescension!  Fancy Dam’s society a horrible injury and disgrace!  To a thing like Haddon Berners!

“Well, I simply haunted Folkestone after that, and developed a love for Amelia Harringport and her brothers that surprised them—­hypocrite that I am! (but I was punished when they talked slightingly of Dam and she sneered at the man whom she had shamelessly pursued when all was well with him.  She ‘admires’ Haddon now.)

“At last I met him on one of my week-end visits—­on a Sunday evening it was—­and I simply flew at him in the sight of all respectable, prayer-book-displaying, before-Church-parading, well-behaved Folkestone, and kissed him nearly to death....  And can you believe a woman could be such a fool, Ormonde—­while carefully noting the ‘2 Q.G.’ on his shoulder-straps, I never thought to find out his alias—­for of course he hides his identity, thinking as he does, poor darling boy, that he has brought eternal disgrace on an honoured name—­a name that appears twice on the rolls of the V.C. records.

“Ormonde, were it not that it would increase his misery and agony of mind I would run away from Monksmead, take a room near the Queen’s Greys barracks, and haunt the main gates until I saw him again.  He should then tell me how to communicate with him, or I would hang about there till he did.  I’d marry him ‘off the strength’ and live (till I am ‘of age’) by needlework if he would have me.  But, of course, he’d never understand that I’d be happier, and a better woman, in a Shorncliffe lodging, as a soldier’s wife, than ever I shall be here in this dreary Monksmead—­until he is restored and re-habilitated (is that the word?  I mean—­comes into his own as a brave and noble gentleman who never did a mean or cowardly