This mental resolve of his was most rigidly carried out. He avoided Miss Mason in an unmistakable manner, and held aloof from society on her account. It took her some time to realise this painful fact, but when she did grasp it her whole soul rose in arms; and hearing about the same period a remark he had made about her--viz. “that she might be considered a fine-looking woman, but was not at all his style, and that he thought her awfully bad form.” This, though breathed in confidence over a midnight cheroot, _en route_ from a dance where Miss Mason had been making herself more than usually conspicuous--came round to her ears, and acted like a match in gunpowder, oil in flame. The most venomous hatred took the place of her former admiration, and an insatiate craving for revenge filled her fair bosom--a revenge she fully determined to gratify on the earliest possible occasion. Time went on, the Hussars left for England, and the wedding of Alice and Reginald found its way into the _Home News_. “Now,” thought she, “I will have my innings. I will drop a shell into his camp that will astonish him, to say the least of it, and I’ll light the match at once.” * * * * * Miss Mason’s dearest friend and inveterate ally was spending the day with her. It was October, and although the hot weather was a thing of the past, yet it was still warm, and occasionally muggy. Tiffin concluded, the two ladies retired, Indian fashion, to Miss Mason’s room, and there donned cool white dressing-gowns, and subsided into long cane-lounges. For some time the monotonous creaking of the punkah-rope alone broke the silence. Presently Miss Mason said: “Harriet Chambers, I have been a good friend to you. Have I not stood by you through thick and thin, and helped you out of one or two nasty scrapes?” “You have indeed, dear Charlotte,” replied Mrs. Chambers in grateful accents, and with a visibly heightened colour. “Well now, I want you to do something for me--only a trifle after all, but still I would rather trust you than anyone.” “What can I do? Whatever it is, I shall be only too glad,” returned Mrs. Chambers effusively. “Well, my dear, I’ll soon tell you. You recollect Captain Fairfax of the Hussars?” “Yes, of course I do; a dark young man, who won the Arconum cup, and spent all his time out shikarring.” “Exactly! but he found time enough to be very rude to me and I wish to pay him off somehow.” “But what did he do?” asked Mrs. Chambers, her curiosity aroused. “Never mind what he did--he treated me shamefully, cruelly, abominably,” returned Miss Mason with venomous _empressement_ and a noble indifference to facts. “Well, at any rate, he has left the country now,” put in Mrs. Chambers soothingly.