Outside Marîche’s, the well-known tobacconist, two young men, bearing the unmistakable stamp of the British warrior of the period, were smoking the inevitable weed. Cox, “the horsey,” with hands in pockets, was holding forth at intervals, to Brown, “the _blasé_,” and ladies’ man _par excellence_, of the gallant smashers. “Never saw such a hole as this is in my life--_never_! No hunting, no shooting, no sport of any kind. Think of all the tiptop runs they are having at home now! If _The Field_ is to be believed, there never was such going; nor, for the matter of that, such grief. Here we are--stuck on an island; water wherever you look; not a horse worth twenty pounds in the place!” “Oh come, my dear fellow,” remonstrated his friend, “what about the Colonel’s barb, and half-a-dozen others I could mention?” “Well, not a _hunter_, at any rate, and that’s all the same. If we are left here another year, I believe I shall cut my throat--or get _married_.” Looking at his companion with critical gravity, to see how he took this tremendous alternative, but observing no wonderful expression of alarm or anxiety depicted on his face, he continued to puff furiously at the cigar, which he held almost savagely between his set teeth. Suddenly he exclaimed: “By Jove, there’s that Miss Saville that all the fellows are talking about! Why she’s nothing but a schoolgirl after all.” “Nevertheless, she is the prettiest girl in Valetta,” replied Mr. Brown, taking his cheroot out of his mouth and gazing with an air of languid approval after a tall slight figure, in a well-cut blue serge costume, that, in company with an elderly lady, was crossing the Palace Square. “By the way, Brown, who _is_ this Miss Saville when she is at home?” “Miss Saville,” replied Brown, propping himself against the doorway, and evidently preparing for a narrative, “is----In the first place, an heiress, four thousand a-year, my dear boy--think of that.” * * * * * Encouraged by a nod from Cox, he proceeded: “She is also an orphan.” “Good!” quoth Cox emphatically. “But you need not run away with the idea that she is an unprotected female. She has a guardian,” continued his friend impressively. “It seems that her father, General Saville, saved or made a lot of money out in India, and this girl was his only child. Her mother died when she was a baby, and she was sent home and received a first-class education, including _all_ the extras. Are you listening?” “Of course I am; get on with the story.” “Well, old Saville, who had always meant to come home and live on his fortune and repose on his laurels, trusted too long to the climate, and left his bones in the cemetery at Lahore, and his daughter to his great chum, Sir Greville Fairfax, with her fortune and her hand, both tightly tied up, not to marry without his full consent, not to come of age till she was five-and-twenty, and all that sort of thing, you know.” “Yes, yes; go on.”