“No, no!  I want this to be a business transaction, Godfrey.”  He said the words just a little fiercely.

“So it shall be—­if you want it that way.  I’ll go and get my cheque book now.”

When he came back, the cheque made out in his hand, he said thoughtfully, “I hope your friend hasn’t got into the sort of scrape which means that one has to pay money of a—­well, of a blackmailing sort?  There’s no end to that, you know.”

Jack Tosswill looked surprised.  “Good Heavens, no!  He’s only being rushed over a bill—­legal proceedings threatened—­you know the sort of thing?”

“I’ve made out the cheque to self and endorsed it,” observed Radmore.

“Thanks awfully.  You are a good sort.  I am far more grateful than I can say, far more than—­than—­if it was only for myself—­”

He stopped abruptly, and there was an awkward pause.  Then Jack, speaking rather breathlessly, asked an odd question:—­

“You knew Crofton very well, didn’t you, Godfrey?  What kind of a chap was he?”

He brought out the question with an effort.  But he did so want to know!  For the first time in his self-confident, comfortable, young life Jack Tosswill was in love and full of painful, poignant, retrospective jealousy.

Radmore looked away, instinctively.  “I liked Colonel Crofton, I always got on with him—­but he was not popular.  He was not at all happy when I knew him, and unhappy people are rarely popular.”

He was wondering whether he had better say anything to Jack—­whether the favour he had just done him gave him the right to speak.

“I suppose he was at least thirty years older than Mrs. Crofton?”

Radmore nodded, and then they neither spoke for a few moments.  Each was waiting for the other to say something, and at last Jack asked another question.

“They didn’t get on very well together, did they?”

“When I first knew them they seemed to be all right.  But he was very jealous of her, and he had cause to be, for most of the fellows out there were in love with her, and well, not to put too fine a point on it, she liked it!” He hesitated.  “She was rather too fond of telling people that her husband wasn’t quite kind to her.”

“I think that was very natural of her!” exclaimed Jack, and Radmore felt a surge of pity for the young fellow.  Still he forced himself to go on:  “It’s no use pretending.  She was—­and still is—­a tremendous flirt.”

Jack made a restless movement.

“I’m afraid you think me rather a cad for saying that, and I wouldn’t say it to anyone but you.  She was bred in a bad school—­brought up, so I understood from a man who had known her as a girl, in Southsea, by a widowed mother as pretty as herself.  Her first husband—­”

“But—­but surely Colonel Crofton was her first husband?”

“No,” again Radmore avoided looking at his companion, “she’s been married twice.  Her first husband, a good-looking young chap in the 11th Hussars, died quite soon after the marriage, the two of them having ‘blued’ all they had between them.  I suppose she foolishly thought there was nothing left for it but for her to marry Colonel Crofton.  And the real trouble was that Colonel Crofton was poor.  I fancy they’d have got on perfectly well if he had had pots of money.”