“Of course!  Of course!” he said perfunctorily.  “You would think so.  It’s amusing.  However, being perfectly neutral and friendly to you both, I have consented to deliver his message.  Say that I am humouring an invalid if you like.  He says that this affair is by no means at an end.  He intends to send you his seconds directly he has regained his strength—­providing, of course, the army is not in the field at that time.”

“He intends—­does he?  Why certainly,” spluttered Lieutenant D’Hubert passionately.  The secret of this exasperation was not apparent to the visitor; but this passion confirmed him in the belief which was gaining ground outside that some very serious difference had arisen between these two young men.  Something serious enough to wear an air of mystery.  Some fact of the utmost gravity.  To settle their urgent difference those two young men had risked being broken and disgraced at the outset, almost, of their career.  And he feared that the forthcoming inquiry would fail to satisfy the public curiosity.  They would not take the public into their confidence as to that something which had passed between them of a nature so outrageous as to make them face a charge of murder—­neither more nor less.  But what could it be?

The surgeon was not very curious by temperament; but that question, haunting his mind, caused him twice that evening to hold the instrument off his lips and sit silent for a whole minute—­right in the middle of a tune—­trying to form a plausible conjecture.

II

He succeeded in this object no better than the rest of the garrison and the whole of society.  The two young officers, of no especial consequence till then, became distinguished by the universal curiosity as to the origin of their quarrel.  Madame de Lionne’s salon was the centre of ingenious surmises; that lady herself was for a time assailed with inquiries as the last person known to have spoken to these unhappy and reckless young men before they went out together from her house to a savage encounter with swords, at dusk, in a private garden.  She protested she had noticed nothing unusual in their demeanour.  Lieutenant Feraud had been visibly annoyed at being called away.  That was natural enough; no man likes to be disturbed in a conversation with a lady famed for her elegance and sensibility” But, in truth, the subject bored Madame de Lionne since her personality could by no stretch of imagination be connected with this affair.  And it irritated her to hear it advanced that there might have been some woman in the case.  This irritation arose, not from her elegance or sensibility, but from a more instinctive side of her nature.  It became so great at last that she peremptorily forbade the subject to be mentioned under her roof.  Near her couch the prohibition was obeyed, but farther off in the salon the pall of the imposed silence continued to be lifted more or less.  A diplomatic personage