It may easily be supposed that Vane was most impatient to hear all the details of his friend's remarkable visit to the Collingwoods--remarkable, at least, under all circumstances--but he could not fail to listen with emotions of a somewhat mingled cast to the account of Ida's undoubted grief for his supplanter--an account which he certainly, with that love of self-torment peculiar to some men, wrung from Trevor Chute by dint of much industrious cross-questioning. Could he blame her for it? 'This sadness, of which all are cognizant,' said Chute, 'is not unaccountable, you know, Jerry.' 'I suppose so.' 'It is natural grief for Jack Beverley.' 'Pleasant fact to thrust on me!' said Vane, grimly. 'Pardon me, old fellow, I did not thrust it on you. But take heart; a girl with such capacity for love and tenderness is worth the winning.' 'I won her, man alive!' said Jerry, savagely. 'Well, such a fortune is worth winning again.' 'This is barrack slang, Trevor.' 'Not at all,' said Chute, laughing at his friend's petulance. 'Be assured that she must love something; and your turn will deservedly come in due time.' 'If a cat or a monkey don't take my place.' 'Cynical again.' 'I can't help being so, Trevor, as well as being a simpleton.' 'Nay, don't say so, Jerry,' said the soldier, kindly; 'I think this unchanging love you have for a girl who used you so does honour to your heart, especially in this age of ours, when we are much more addicted to pence than to poetry; and, as some one says, the _sauce piquante_ of life is its glorious uncertainty.' 'And Clare--what were your thoughts and conclusions about _her_? 'My thoughts you know; my conclusions--I have none,' replied Chute, who, since he had again seen and talked with Clare Collingwood, had felt his heart too full of her to confide, even to his friend, as yet, what hope or fear he had. 'And you saw Violet, too?' asked Vane, to fill up a pause. 'Oh, yes,' replied Chute, with animation; 'Violet, whilom the pretty little girl--the child with a wealth of golden hair flowing below her waist, and no end of mischief and fun in her bright blue eyes; she seems the same now as then. She actually spoke of Desmond being an admirer of Clare.' 'Surely that was bad form in the girl, to _you_ especially.' 'She did so through pure inadvertence, Jerry; but I must own that, when coupled with your remarks, the circumstance stung me more than a week ago I could have anticipated. But I suppose such trials as those of ours,' he continued, helping himself to a bumper of sherry without waiting to be asked, 'are part and parcel of the ills that manhood has to encounter--"Manhood, with all its chances and changes, its wild revels and its dark regrets--its sparkling champagne-cup and its bitter aconite lying at the dregs."' 'Times there are when I blush at my own want of proper pride of heart in continuing to mourn after a girl who has quietly let me drop into the place of a mere friend.'