“Oh, I don’t think it’s difficult--mere routine for the most part. My boy, it is a shame for you to be tied to such work.” “Well, all work is routine; it can’t be worse for that than the army. And then there are prizes. Who knows but I may end my days as a prosperous banker, with an income which would make a General’s mouth water?” Between the Colonel’s hearty friendship and help on the one hand, and Nouna’s unexpected and discreet sympathy on the other, Lauriston was beginning to realise that the worst stains of the degradation he had felt so keenly might in time be wiped out, and in this reaction he was inclined at first to lose remembrance of Chloris White’s threats, and to look upon the smallness of his means as the present difficulty which would need the sternest grappling with. He could not bear the thought of plunging his wife straight from the unbridled extravagance and luxury which she had lately enjoyed with so keen a zest to an existence more meagre than that which had palled upon her so soon in the first days of their marriage. That she was preparing with great fortitude for such a plunge was proved to him the day before they started. She was rather silent and abstracted at dinner that evening, and when it was over she walked with a listless and melancholy tread into the quaint drawing-rooms, the shelves and brackets of which George found were bare of their load of fantastic trifles. Fans, screens, mirrors, ivory carvings, all had disappeared; only half a dozen small porcelain vases, filled with fresh flowers that morning, remained. “You’ve been packing up, I see, busy little woman,” said George, trying to speak cheerfully, as he stood with his arm round her in the room which already began to wear a desolate look, as if the soul had died out of it. “No, not packing, only making a list of them. Here it is. I thought they could pack them up themselves after we were gone,” she said, sadly. By “they” she indicated with a shudder the mysterious enemies who were driving forth her and her husband from their beautiful home, and forcing them to make horrid things called inventories of her little Turkish tables, and the soft sofas on which she had been so fond of resting, and the big oak bookcase which was the pride of George’s heart. She held out two or three half-sheets of her husband’s foolscap paper, closely scribbled on both sides with her spidery, illegible writing.