What she precisely asked of him, muttering, wheezing, whining, snivelling, as she did, repeating herself--with her burthen of "O dear, O dear, O dear!"--I don't know. Her lost girl, her fine up-standing girl, her Nance, her only one, figured in it as needing mercy. Her "Oh, sir, I ask you kindly!" and "Oh, sir, for this once ...!" made me sick: yet he bore with her as she ran on, dribbling tears and gin in a mingled flood; he bore with her, heard her in silence, and in the end, by a look which I was not able to discover, quieted and sent her shuffling back to her place. So soon as she was down, the life-guardsman was on his feet, a fine figure of a man. He marched unfalteringly up, stiffened, saluted, and then, observing the ritual of hand to shoulder, hand to chin, spoke out his piece like the honest fellow he was; spoke it aloud and without fear, evenly and plainly. I thought that he had got it by heart, as I thought also of another person I was to hear by-and-by. He wanted, badly it seemed, news of his sweetheart, whom he was careful to call Miss Dixon. She had last been heard of outside the Brixton Bon Marché, where she had been seen with a lady friend, talking to "two young chaps" in Volunteer uniform. They went up the Brixton Road toward Acre Lane, and Miss Dixon, at any rate, was never heard of again. It was wearing him out; he wasn't the man he had been, and had no zest for his meals. She had never written; his letters to her had come back through the "Dead Office." He thought he should go out of his mind sometimes; was afraid to shave, not knowing what he might be after with "them things." If anything could be done for him he should be thankful. Miss Dixon was very well connected, and sang in a choir. Here he stopped, saluted, turned and marched away into the night. I heard him pass a word or two to the policeman, who turned aside and blew his nose. The hospital nurse, who spoke in a feverish whisper, then a young woman from the Piccadilly gas-lamps, who cried and rocked herself about, followed; and then, to my extreme amazement, two ladies with cloaks and hoods over evening gowns--one of them a Mrs. Stanhope, who was known to me. The taller and younger lady, chaperoned by my friend, I did not recognise. Her face was hidden by her hood. I was now more than interested, it seemed to me that I was, in a sense, implicated. At any rate I felt very delicate about overhearing what was to come. It is one thing to become absorbed in a ritual the like of which, in mid-London, you can never have experienced before, but quite another thing to listen to the secret desires of a friend in whose house you may have dined within the month. However--by whatever casuistries I might have compassed it--I did remain. Let me hope, nay, let me believe of myself that if the postulant had proved to be my friend, Mrs. Shrewton Stanhope, herself, I should either have stopped my ears or immediately retired.