With all his popularity, he was the last man with whom any of them would have taken a liberty. He would have been bold indeed who would have asked him why he left the Fifth Hussars, not to speak of a fine country place, magnificent shooting, and ten thousand a-year, to lead a dull monotonous life on the scorching plains of India? He would have been bolder still who would have inquired about the fair and exceedingly pretty girl, that Captain Vaughan had seen sitting next him at dinner the day of embarkation. Who was she? Was she his sister or his sweetheart? Someone said he had a vague idea that Fairfax was a married man; but he was silenced and crushed by general consent. Fairfax was a bachelor--crossed in love, if you will--but a bachelor _pur et simple_. Look at his bungalow--rigid simplicity. Look at his room--not a bit of woman’s work, not a photo, not an ornament. A perilously narrow camp-bed, a few chairs, a portable kit, a writing-table, and a squadron of boots, and that was all. There were a few books, chiefly on cavalry tactics and military history, leavened with half-a-dozen sporting novels; not a French one among them. Anything but like the accepted idea of a smart young cavalry officer’s lair. If, as they say, a man’s room is a type of himself, Fairfax was a soldier, a rigid moralist, and above all a bachelor, and one who would no doubt develop into an old bachelor into the bargain. Captain Campbell and Lieutenant Harvey were sitting in their mutual verandah, in long chairs, clad in costumes more conspicuous for ease than elegance, smoking, taking away the characters of their neighbours’ horses, and minutely discussing the approaching big races. From horses they came to riders, and finally to Fairfax. “He is one of the best fellows going, but I cannot make him out; he looks like a man with a story.” “He does; and he has one you may be sure,” replied Captain Campbell with conviction, languidly puffing at his cheroot. “If he was the life and soul of the Fifth, as we have heard, their ideas of mirth and jollity are more moderate than I could have imagined. Sometimes, I grant you, he is in fairish spirits, and he can say very amusing things; but, as a rule, he is silent and _distrait_. It is certainly in field sports and on parade that he shines most; brilliant sociability is not his _forte_.”