“The story is too long to tell you now; enough, if I say it was all about Sophy. You remember Sophy, and a fellow who was to have married her, and who jilted her, and not only this but boasted of the injury he had done her, and the insult he had thrown on us. A friend of mine, Barnard, a brother officer, heard him--but why go on with this detail?--there was a quarrel and a challenge, and it was by merest accident I heard of it, and reached Basle in time. Of course, I was not going to leave to Barnard what of right belonged to me. There were, as you can imagine, innumerable complications in the matter. Rochefort, the other man’s friend, and a French fellow, insisted on having a finger in the pie. The end of it was, I shot Graham and somebody else--I believe Rochefort--put a bullet into Barnard. The Swiss laws in some cantons are severe, and we only learned too late that we had fought in the very worst of them; so I ran, I don’t know how, or in what direction. I lost my head for a while, and wandered about the Voralberg and the Splugen for a week or two. How I find myself now here is quite a mystery to me.” There was a haggard wildness in his look that fully accorded with all he said, and the old lady felt the most honest pity for his sufferings. “I don’t know if I’m perfectly safe here,” said he, looking fearfully around him. “Are you sure you can conceal me, if need be?” “Quite sure; have no fear about that. I’ll tell the girls that your safety requires the greatest caution and secrecy, and you’ll see how careful they will be.” “Girls _will_ talk, though,” said he, doubtingly. “There is the double security here--they have no one to talk to,” she said, with a faint smile. “Very true. I was forgetting how retired your life was here. Now for the next point. What are you to tell them--I mean, how much are they to know?” The old lady looked puzzled; she felt she might easily have replied, “If they only know no more than I can tell them, your secret will certainly be safe;” but, as she looked at his haggard cheek and feverish eye, she shrunk from renewing a theme full of distress and suffering. “Leave it to me to say something--anything which shall show them that you are in a serious trouble, and require all their secrecy and sympathy.” “Yes, that may do--at least for the present. It will do at least with Emily, who bears me no ill will.” “You wrong Florence if you imagine that _she_ does. It was only the other day, when, in a letter from Loyd, she read that you had left the army, she said how sorry she was you had quitted the career so suited to your abilities.” “Indeed! I scarce hoped for so much of interest in me.” “Oh, she talks continually about you; and always as of one, who only needs the guidance of some true friend to be a man of mark and distinction yet.” “It is very good, very kind of her,” he said; and, for an instant, seemed lost in thought.