Days and weeks went by slowly enough, but Betty’s photograph now stood boldly on George’s writing-table, and spurred him to many a tough task. True, it was chaperoned by portraits of Mrs. Malone and Cuckoo, and by casual eyes she was supposed to be merely another sister, and Captain La Touche kept his secret. Parades and regimental work occupied George’s mornings, and many an evening he never went out till dark, but worked hard with his monshee, who proclaimed him to be a “wonderfully clever gentleman,” and secretly felt secure of his own premium as together they plodded through the _Prem Sagar_ and _Bagh-o-Bahar_. George was obliged to forego boating, cricket and paperchasing, he took his name off the polo club, and abjured cigarettes and expensive boots, and only that in his prosperous days he had always been so open-handed, there would have been an outcry at his economy. But his friends believed he had some excellent reason for his self-denial, though no one but Captain La Touche knew how good that reason was. Captain La Touche was a man of five-and-thirty, with a considerable private fortune, and a handsome, pleasant face. His figure was his despair, he would grow stout, aye, and keep stout; despite of anti-fat, exercise, and semi-starvation, he still conspicuously filled the eye! Now he had accepted the situation, ate and drank whatever his rather fastidious palate dictated, kept a weight-carrying charger, and one broad-backed, confidential cob, and fell into the rank of a looker-on, at pig-sticking and polo, and spoke of himself as “a superannuated butterfly!” He was not what is called “a red-hot soldier,” and never aspired to command the Royal Musketeers. He looked upon parades and orderly rooms as vexatious interludes in an otherwise agreeably spent existence, but he was very much attached to the regiment, as an excellent travelling club, and was the firm, personal friend of almost every one of his brother officers; and George Holroyd was Jonathan to this goodly, popular, and somewhat cynical, David.