was always tired now towards the evening; and although rejoiced to be once more at home, once more gazing his fill on the only face he had ever much cared to look at--an indulgence that partook, he knew not why, of the nature of a stolen pleasure--yet his satisfaction was of that inward kind which does not betray itself by outward signs of mirth, but which, more particularly in failing health, flows on in a deep silent current, that to the superficial observer has all the appearance of apathy and cold, selfish carelessness. But the General was in his glory. Fond of eating and drinking himself, his delight was to see his friends eat and drink too; and as he urged on his guests the different good things for both purposes that smoked on the table or sparkled on the sideboard, he monopolised the conversation with the same zest that he demolished a considerable share of the entertainment. “Charlie, you eat nothing, my boy,” said the General: “that haunch was roasted a turn too much; let me give you a bit of the grouse. Zounds! we must fatten you up here--what? commissariat disgraceful at the Cape! ’Gad, sir, we wouldn’t stand it in India. I broke three commissaries myself in the Deccan, because there was no soda-water in camp--fact, I pledge you my honour, Mrs. Delaval. I don’t believe Charlie’s had a morsel to eat since he went into training for the steeple-chase.” “You wouldn’t have said so if you’d seen him getting well at Fort Beaufort,” remarked Frank, rousing himself from his fit of abstraction; “his voracity was perfectly frightful! I wish you could have seen him, Miss Kettering, in a black skull-cap, as thin as a thread-paper, on crutches, asking every ten minutes what o’clock it was, dreading to die of starvation between two o’clock dinner and five o’clock tea; you never beheld anything so thin and so hungry.”