These worthies, having nothing better to do, began to beguile the time by admiring each other’s uniforms, criticising the appearance of the company, and such vague impertinences as go by the name of general conversation. Lacquers, who had just caught the turn of his hessians at a favourable point of view, was more than usually communicative. “Heard of Bolter?” says he, addressing the public in general, and amongst others a first cousin of that injured man. “Taken his wife back again--aw--soft, I should say--fact is, she and Fopples couldn’t get on; Frank kicked at the poodle directly he got to the railway station; he swore he would only take the parrot, and they quarrelled there. I don’t believe they went abroad at all, at least not together. Seen the poodle? Nice dog; they’ve got him in Green Street; very like Frank; believe he was jealous of him!” A general laugh greeted the hussar’s witticism, and the cousin being, as usual, not on the best of terms with his relation, enjoyed the joke more than any one else. Major D’Orville alone has neither listened to the story nor caught the point. Blanche’s pleading, grateful eyes haunt him still. He feels that the more he likes her, the less he would wish to marry her. “She is worthy of a better fate,” he thinks, “than to be linked to a broken-down _roué_.” And as is often the case, the charm of beauty in another brings forcibly to his mind the only face he ever really loved; and the Major sighs as he wishes he could begin life again, on totally different principles from those he has all along adopted. Well, it is too late now. The game must be played out, and he proceeds to cement his alliance with the General by asking him to lunch with him at his club “after this thing’s over.” “We’ll all go together,” exclaimed Lacquers, who had been meditating the very same move against his prospective uncle-in-law, only he couldn’t hit the right pronunciation of a _déjeuner à la fourchette_, the term in which he was anxious to couch his invitation.