In any case, her sudden departure argued well for Dale’s liberation.  If the rupture had occurred I was quite contented.  That is what I had wished to accomplish.  It only remained now to return to London, while breath yet stayed in my body, and lead him diplomatically to the feet of Maisie Ellerton.  Then I would have ended my eumoirous task, and my last happy words would be a paternal benediction.  But all the same, I had set forth to find this confounded captain and did not want to be hindered.  The sportsman’s instinct which, in my robust youth, had led me to crawl miles on my belly over wet heather in order to get a shot at a stag, I found, somewhat to my alarm, was urging me on this chase after Captain Vauvenarde.  He was my quarry.  I resented interference.  Deer-stalking then, and man-stalking now, I wanted no petticoats in the party.  I worked myself up into an absurd state of irritability.  Why was she coming to spoil the sport?  I had arranged to track her husband down, reason with him, work on his feelings, telegraph for his wife, and in an affecting interview throw them into each other’s arms.  Now, goodness knows what would happen.  Certainly not my beautifully conceived coup de theatre.

“And she has the impertinence,” I cried in my wrath, “to sign herself ‘Lola’!  As if I ever called her, or could ever be in a position to call her ‘Lola’!  I should like to know,” I exclaimed, hurling the “Indicateur des Chemins de Fer” on to the seat of a summer-house, built after the manner of a little Greek temple, “I should like to know what the deuce she means by it!”

“Hallo!  Hallo!  What the devil’s the matter?” cried a voice; and I found I had disturbed from his slumbers an unnoticed Colonel of British Cavalry.

“A thousand pardons!” said I.  “I thought I was alone, and gave vent to the feelings of the moment.”

Colonel Bunnion stretched himself and joined me.

“That’s the worst of this place,” he said.  “It’s so liverish.  One lolls about and sleeps all day long, and one’s liver gets like a Strasburg goose’s and plays Old Harry with one’s temper.  Why one should come here when there are pheasants to be shot in England, I don’t know.”

“Neither your liver nor your temper seem to be much affected, Colonel,” said I, “for you’ve been violently awakened from a sweet sleep and are in a most amiable frame of mind.”

He laughed, suggested exercise, the Briton’s panacea for all ills, and took me for a walk.  When we returned at dusk, and after I had had tea before the fire (for December evenings in Algiers are chilly) in one of the pretty Moorish alcoves of the lounge, my good humour was restored.  I viewed our pursuit of Captain Vauvenarde in its right aspect—­that of a veritable Snark-Hunt of which I was the Bellman—­and the name “Lola” curled itself round my heart with the same grateful sensation of comfort as the warm China tea.  After all, it was only as Lola that I thought of her.  The name fitted