“Yes, yes, you were talking to the sister all the evening; now there is only one subject which makes a young man so utterly oblivious of everything else. Come, you can confess to me; which of her two sisters were you trying to get her influence with?” “I was trying to get her influence with Ella Millard.” The Colonel stopped, pulled the young man face to face with him by a sharp wrench of the arm, and looked up into his face with his most steely expression. “Are you serious?” he asked in a grating voice. “Most serious, I assure you, sir.” “You asked that yellow-skinned, swarthy little girl to marry you?” “I think, Colonel, the most important thing about a wife is not the colour of her skin.” “There you’re wrong, entirely wrong. Your fair white woman may be cold, may be irritating, she may henpeck you by day, she may nag at you at night. But for treachery, for unfaithfulness, for every quality which leads a man to ruin, despair and dishonour, go to your dark-complexioned woman. Ella is my niece, and as she is plain, she may go through life without doing much harm. But I would rather see a hump grow on her shoulders, and flames come from her mouth as she talked, than see her marry a man in whom I take an interest, as I do in you, George.” “You need have no fear in this case, Colonel, for she won’t have me,” said Lauriston, not attempting to combat the Colonel’s superstitious prejudices, which were as strong as those of any old woman. And as, in his relief on finding that his fears were groundless, Lord Florencecourt let his hand drop from the young man’s arm, the latter took the opportunity to bid him good-night and walk off with the excuse of an appointment. If even Ella’s skin was too dark to please him, what would the Colonel find to say of Nouna’s, he thought, wondering how the old soldier had picked up his strong prejudice. Could he really have been once under the sway of a woman compared to whom even the present Lady Florencecourt, with all her tyranny, ill-humour and caprices, was as light after darkness? Lauriston had no means of telling, and the question did not trouble him long. For to-night was the last night of the week in the course of which Nouna had made him swear that he would return, and he knew that the girl was even now anxiously on the watch for him. He felt that he would have done better to have made his call that morning, to have seen her under the prosaic influences of daylight and Mrs. Ellis, as he had intended to do. But a friend had called unexpectedly to carry him off to Hurlingham, and had left him no chance of keeping his oath except by slipping a note into the letter-box of 36, Mary Street, in the darkness of the evening. This would satisfy his conscience and save him from the danger of the girl’s alluring eyes.