Such a man as Random would never set the Thames on fire, and certainly he had no ambition to perform that astounding feat.  He was fond of his profession and intended to remain in the army as long as he could.  He desired to marry and beget a family, and retire, when set free from soldiering, to his country seat, and there perform blamelessly the congenial role of a village squire, until called upon to join the respectable corpses in the Random vault.  Not that he was a saint or ever could be one.  Neither black nor white, he was simply gray, being an ordinary mixture of good and bad.  As theology has provided no hereafter for gray people, it is hard to imagine where the bulk of humanity will go.  But doubts on this point never troubled Random.  He went to church, kept his mouth shut and his pores open and vaguely believed that it would be all right somehow.  A very comfortable if superficial philosophy indeed.

It can easily be guessed that Random’s somewhat colorless personality would never attract Lucy Kendal, since the hues of her own character were deeper.  For this reason she was drawn to Hope, who possessed that aggressive artistic temperament, where good and bad, are in violent contrast.  Random took opinions from books, or from other people, and his mind, like a looking-glass, reflected whatever came along; but Hope possessed opinions of his own, both right and wrong, and held to these in the face of all verbal opposition.  He could argue and did argue, when Random simply agreed.  Lucy had similar idiosyncrasies, inherited from a clever father, so it was just as well that she preferred Archie to Frank.  Had the latter young gentleman married her, he would have dwindled to Lady Random’s husband, and would have found too late that he had domesticated a kind of imitation George Eliot.  When he congratulated Archie on his engagement somewhat ruefully, he little thought what an escape he had had.

But Professor Braddock, who did not belong to the gray tribe, knew nothing of this, as his Egyptological studies did not permit him time to argue on such commonplace matters.  He therefore failed in advance when he set out to persuade Random into renewing his suit.  As the fiery little man afterwards expressed himself, “I might as well have talked to a mollusc,” for Random politely declined to be used as an instrument to forward the Professor’s ambition at the cost of Miss Kendal’s unhappiness.  The interview took place in Sir Frank’s quarters at the Fort on the day after Hervey had called to propose a search for the corpse.  And it was during this interview that Braddock learned something which both startled and annoyed him.

Random, at three o’clock, had just changed into mufti, when the Professor was announced by his servant.  Braddock, determined to give his host no chance of denying himself, followed close on the man’s heels, and was in the room almost before Sir Frank had read the card.  It was a bare room, sparsely furnished, according to the War Office’s idea of comfort, and although the baronet had added a few more civilized necessities, it still looked somewhat dismal.  Braddock, who liked comfort, shook hands carelessly with his host and cast a disapproving eye on his surroundings.