Mrs. Lenoir, however, treasured it in her armoury: she might have need of it. Plainly the General might consider that, confession once begun, confession ought to have gone further. She had the same plausible answers she had given to Winnie herself. She had another; she acknowledged her own fib, but she would plead that she had no right to betray her friend. In the end she had not much doubt that she could manage the General. She had managed him before--in a much more difficult case; and he was very fond of Winnie. Something of partisanship influenced her mood; the free lance renewed memories of old raids in this little skirmish against convention; she was minded to fight at the best advantage she could--with the father 'contained' and the son as deeply committed to his position as she could get him before the blow was struck. As a result of this conversation the General carried away an uneasy idea--born of the confidence so pointedly reposed in him, enforced by the slight touch of contempt in Mrs. Lenoir's voice--that one of the ladies, even possibly both, considered his son, if not a laggard, yet at least somewhat prosaically circumspect in his love-making. Such a view, if really entertained, did some injustice to Bertie Merriam. He was not impulsive; he was not passionate. He took time to make up his mind. It would be almost true to say that, before falling in love, he made up his mind that he would--not the commonest order of events. But he had pretty well made up his mind by now. Only he received very little encouragement. Winnie was always 'jolly' to him; but she asked nothing of him, made no special claims on him--and took the same liberty as she accorded. In the pleasant round of their life he was one comrade among many; more intimate than the rest, no doubt, by reason of his habitual escort, the excursions, and the messing together at table, but not different in kind. Vaguely the Major felt that there was some barrier, real but imperceptible, which he could not pass--a thing made up out of a thousand unobtrusive trifles, yet composing in the mass a defence that he could not see how to penetrate. There was a curious little man in the hotel--a man of about forty-five, short, bald, shabby, yet clean, though he did not bathe. In fact he did nothing--no excursions, no sports, no dancing, no flirtation. He did not even read; he sat about--meditating, it must be presumed. Something in him made the girls giggle and the men wink, as he passed by; the men said 'Dotty!' and the girls sniggered at the witticism. His name, sought out in the hotel register, proved to be Adolphus Wigram. The wit who had made the search called him 'Dolly'--and the name became his at once, varied back to 'Dotty' sometimes by an ultra-witticism.