In a garrison town, sea on three sides, and barely available space on the other for a polo match or a herring run, it may be believed that old Colonel de Gourmet was in no lack of callers. Six or eight men, young enough, most of them, to be their host’s grandsons, were lounging, this July afternoon, in various attitudes of idleness about his pleasant bachelor drawing-room. The air was lightly impregnated with tobacco smoke, so good of its kind that, mingled with the wafted garden sweets, it scarcely seemed grosser than some finely distilled odour of musk flower or of tea-rose. Gaston Arbuthnot was on the point of finishing a match at écarté with little Oscar Jones--two or three of Oscar’s brother officers forming a silent and discriminative gallery. Cards, simply as cards, Gaston Arbuthnot disliked, although he had an inborn knack of playing most things successfully. The childish intricacies of a game like Nap., beloved of all the Maltshire subalterns, were to him a weariness of spirit. ‘We can use your English Nap. as a means,’ he would tell them, frankly, ‘just as we can use blind hookey or, simpler than either, chicken hazard, if we want to transfer money from one man’s pocket to another. As a matter of amusement, I would sooner play euchre or poker for counters: in poker especially, all our natural human instincts--bluster, bluffing, intent to deceive, etc.--come agreeably to the fore.’ Whist, Gaston confessed, he played well. At écarté he was moderately good. This moderate goodness his antagonist was about to test practically. ‘Four, all!’ cried little Oscar, eager over a just-dealt, brilliant hand of trumps. ‘The king,’ said Gaston, quietly laying down his cards. ‘Some one tell de Gourmet it is his turn to cut in.’ The Colonel had now risen to his feet. He was watching an object, evidently of paramount interest, through his opera-glasses. ‘A throat--an ankle--shoulders! Tell you what it is, sir,--she is the prettiest woman in the island--not one of our society beauties can hold a candle to her! And she’s not a woman one meets at any of the parties.--By and by, Arbuthnot, by and by.’ For Gaston with a presentiment of the truth, sat, restlessly, shuffling and re-shuffling the cards. ‘To view the Queen of Hearts in flesh and blood is better, surely, than handling her in pasteboard. Now where did one see that little divinity before? At Saturday’s rose-show, of course. Asked Linda Thorne about her. Mrs. Linda--true type of her sex--affected not to know her name. Luckily, such a paragon does not need a name. An Archdeaconess, if I mistake not, threw her little pebble. “The young person with the yellow hair was--nobody one knew.”’ Every man in the room, with the exception of Arbuthnot, had by this time crowded to the window. One of the youngsters hazarded a bold whisper in the host’s ear. It was old de Gourmet’s deafer ear. He caught the note of warning imperfectly. He resumed his parable with warmth: