Now, while she was employed in blackening his character, Philip Marsden was crediting her with all the cardinal virtues. He had not seen the daily paper, for reasons which put many other things out of his head for the time being. He had no idea when he wilfully went to play racquets that evening instead of following Raby's advice of seeing Belle, that he was throwing away his last chance of an interview; but as he sat outside the court, cooling himself after the game, an urgent summons came from the orderly-room. Ten minutes after he was reading a telegram bidding the 101st Sikhs start to the front immediately. Farewell to leisure; for though the regiment had been under warning for service and in a great measure prepared for it, the next forty-eight hours were ones of exceeding bustle. Philip, harassed on all sides, had barely time to realise what it meant; and, despite a catch at his heart when he thought of Belle, the blood ran faster in his veins from the prospect of action. His own certainty, moreover, was so great, that it seemed almost incredible that one, of whose sympathy he felt assured, should see the matter with other eyes. Nevertheless he was determined to tell her all at the first opportunity; and often, as he went untiringly through the wearisome details of inspection, his mind was busy over the interview to come; but the end was always the same, and left him with a smile on his face. John Raby happened to be standing in the verandah when, between pillar and post, Philip found that vacant five minutes which he had been chasing all day long. "Can't see you, I'm afraid," he returned, cheerfully, to the inquiry for Miss Stuart. "The fact is she has worried herself into a fever over that paragraph. I don't wonder; it was infernal!" "What paragraph?" asked Philip innocently. John Raby looked at him and laughed, not a very pleasant kind of laugh. "Upon my soul," he said, "you _are_ an unlucky beggar. I begin to think it's a true case, for you've enough real bad luck to make a three-volume-course of true love run rough! So you haven't seen it? Then I'll fetch it out. The paper is just inside." Philip, reining in his restive horse viciously, read the offending lines, punctuating them with admonitory digs of his heels and tugs at the bridle as the charger fretted at the fluttering paper. He looked well on horseback, and the civilian, lazily leaning against a pillar, admired him, dangling sword, jingling spurs, and all. He folded the paper methodically against his knee and handed it back. "And Miss Stuart believed all that?" he asked quietly. "Women always believe what they see printed. She is in an awful rage, of course; but I warned you, Marsden, you know I did." "You were most kind. Will you tell Miss Stuart, when you see her, that I called to say good-bye and that I was sorry,--yes! you can say I was sorry, for the cause of her fever." His tone was bitterness itself.