'Two; good ones, also.' 'And she refused them?' 'So Ida told me.' 'Ida again; you and Mrs. Beverley seem very good friends.' 'Yes, though she used me shockingly in throwing me over for Beverley.' 'And why did--Clare refuse?' 'Can't say, for the life of me; women are such enigmas; unless a certain Trevor Chute, then broiling in the Punjaub, wherever that may be, had something to do with it.' 'I can pardon much in you, Jerry Vane,' said Chute, gravely; 'for we have been staunch friends ever since I was a species of big brother to you at Rugby; but please not to make a jest of Clare and me. And what of pretty Violet?' 'Oh, Violet is all right,' replied Vane, speaking very fast, and reddening a little at his friend's reproach. 'She has those graceful, taking, and pretty ways with her and about her that will be sure to do well for her in the end; thus, sooner or later, Violet's fortune is certain to be made in a matrimonial point of view.' 'I have heard of this fellow, Harvey Desmond, before,' said Chute, musingly. 'I remember his name when I was in the Household Brigade. He was lately, I think, gazetted a C.B.' 'Of course.' 'For what?' 'In consideration of his great services at Wormwood Scrubs and on Wimbledon Common.' To see Clare on _his_ drag, even with his sister, the Hon. Evelyn, to play propriety, stung Trevor Chute, and, as if divining his very thoughts, Jerry Vane said, let us hope unintentionally: 'All the clubs have linked their names together for some time past.' 'Well,' replied Trevor, with something like a malediction, as he proceeded in a vicious manner to manipulate a cigar, and bite off the end of it. 'What the deuce does that matter to me?' His expression of face, however, belied the indifference he affected for the moment, and feeling that he had caused pain by his remark, Jerry Vane said, as they walked arm and arm along Piccadilly, by the side of the Green Park: 'Neither of us have been very successful in our love affairs with the Collingwoods; and with me even more than you, Trevor, it was a case of "love's labours lost." Yet, when I think of all that Ida Collingwood was in the past time to me, I cannot help feeling maudlin over it. We had, time to me, I cannot help feeling maudlin over it. We had, as you know well, been engaged a year when, unluckily, Beverley, of your corps, became a friend of the family. I know not by what magic he swayed her mind, her heart, and all her thoughts, but, from the first day she knew him, I felt that I was thrown over and that she was lost to me for ever! And on that day when she became Beverley's wife----' In the bitterness of his heart Vane paused, for his voice became tremulous.