“Don’t excite yourself like this,” remonstrated the other.  “Your adversary’s people are very influential, you know, and it looks bad enough on the face of it.  The general had to take notice of their complaint at once.  I don’t think he means to be over-severe with you.  It’s the best thing for you to be kept out of sight for a while.”

“I am very much obliged to the general,” muttered Lieut.  Feraud through his teeth.  “And perhaps you would say I ought to be grateful to you, too, for the trouble you have taken to hunt me up in the drawing-room of a lady who—­”

“Frankly,” interrupted Lieut.  D’Hubert, with an innocent laugh, “I think you ought to be.  I had no end of trouble to find out where you were.  It wasn’t exactly the place for you to disport yourself in under the circumstances.  If the general had caught you there making eyes at the goddess of the temple . . . oh, my word! . . .  He hates to be bothered with complaints against his officers, you know.  And it looked uncommonly like sheer bravado.”

The two officers had arrived now at the street door of Lieut.  Feraud’s lodgings.  The latter turned towards his companion.  “Lieut.  D’Hubert,” he said, “I have something to say to you, which can’t be said very well in the street.  You can’t refuse to come up.”

The pretty maid had opened the door.  Lieut.  Feraud brushed past her brusquely, and she raised her scared and questioning eyes to Lieut.  D’Hubert, who could do nothing but shrug his shoulders slightly as he followed with marked reluctance.

In his room Lieut.  Feraud unhooked the clasp, flung his new dolman on the bed, and, folding his arms across his chest, turned to the other hussar.

“Do you imagine I am a man to submit tamely to injustice?” he inquired, in a boisterous voice.

“Oh, do be reasonable!” remonstrated Lieut.  D’Hubert.

“I am reasonable!  I am perfectly reasonable!” retorted the other with ominous restraint.  “I can’t call the general to account for his behaviour, but you are going to answer me for yours.”

“I can’t listen to this nonsense,” murmured Lieut.  D’Hubert, making a slightly contemptuous grimace.

“You call this nonsense?  It seems to me a perfectly plain statement.  Unless you don’t understand French.”

“What on earth do you mean?”

“I mean,” screamed suddenly Lieut.  Feraud, “to cut off your ears to teach you to disturb me with the general’s orders when I am talking to a lady!”

A profound silence followed this mad declaration; and through the open window Lieut.  D’Hubert heard the little birds singing sanely in the garden.  He said, preserving his calm, “Why!  If you take that tone, of course I shall hold myself at your disposition whenever you are at liberty to attend to this affair; but I don’t think you will cut my ears off.”

“I am going to attend to it at once,” declared Lieut.  Feraud, with extreme truculence.  “If you are thinking of displaying your airs and graces to-night in Madame de Lionne’s salon you are very much mistaken.”