“What?  Oh, so we are.”  Ralph Dacre laughed, his easy, complacent laugh.  “But he’s a dark horse, you know.  I never know quite how to take him.  Your brother Tommy is a deal more intimate with him than I am, though I have stabled with him for over four years.  He’s a very clever fellow, there’s no doubt of that—­altogether too brainy for my taste.  Clever fellows always bore me.  Now I wonder how he strikes you.”

Again there was that slight pause before Stella spoke, but there was nothing very vital about it.  She seemed to be slow in bringing her mind to bear upon the subject.  “I agree with you,” she said then.  “He is clever.  And he is kind too.  He has been very good to Tommy.”

“Tommy would lie down and let him walk over him,” remarked Dacre.  “Perhaps that is what he likes.  But he’s a cold-blooded sort of cuss.  I don’t believe he has a spark of real affection for anybody.  He is too ambitious.”

“Is he ambitious?” Stella’s voice sounded rather weary, wholly void of interest.

Dacre inhaled a deep breath of cigar-smoke and puffed it slowly forth.  His curiosity was warming.  “Oh yes, ambitious as they’re made.  Those strong, silent chaps always are.  And there’s no doubt he will make his mark some day.  He is a positive marvel at languages.  And he dabbles in Secret Service matters too, disguises himself and goes among the natives in the bazaars as one of themselves.  A fellow like that, you know, is simply priceless to the Government.  And he is as tough as leather.  The climate never touches him.  He could sit on a grille and be happy.  No doubt he will be a very big pot some day.”  He tipped the ash from his cigar.  “You and I will be comfortably growing old in a villa at Cheltenham by that time,” he ended.

A little shiver went through Stella.  She said nothing and silence fell between them again.  The moon was rising behind a rugged line of snow-hills across the valley, touching them here and there with a silvery radiance, casting mysterious shadows all about them, sending a magic twilight over the whole world so that they saw it dimly, as through a luminous veil.  The scent of Dacre’s cigar hung in the air, fragrant, aromatic, Eastern.  He was sleepily watching his wife’s pure profile as she gazed into her world of dreams.  It was evident that she took small interest in Monck and his probable career.  It was not surprising.  Monck was not the sort of man to attract women; he cared so little about them—­this silent watcher whose eyes were ever searching below the surface of Eastern life, who studied and read and knew so much more than any one else and yet who guarded knowledge and methods so closely that only those in contact with his daily life suspected what he hid.

“He will surprise us all some day,” Dacre placidly reflected.  “Those quiet, ambitious chaps always soar high.  But I wouldn’t change places. with him even if he wins to the top of the tree.  People who make a specialty of hard work never get any fun out of anything.  By the time the fun comes along, they are too old to enjoy it.”