“There is no reason why the whole regiment should know all one’s affairs,” said George quickly. “And look here, Massey, don’t go and talk about it, there’s a good fellow. You know very well how they all begin to croak if a man marries young, and as I don’t want my wife to meet any of them before it’s necessary, I’d rather they didn’t even hear of it till we’ve had time to look about us,” ended George, who had a nervous dread of the effect the neighbourhood of a pretty woman who was somebody else’s wife had upon several of his fellow-officers. Massey nodded intelligently two or three times in the course of this speech, but at the end of it he hum’d and ha’d rather dubiously and at last spoke out. “Well, you see, Lauriston, of course I won’t say a word, but the fact is something about it has got to the Colonel’s ears already.” “What!” cried George, jumping up. “Yes. You see, when you deposited me on the floor of the corridor outside here last night, neither you nor I took the matter in the quiet and gentlemanly manner we ought to have done. In fact, we made such a row that rumours of it came to the Colonel’s ears, and hearing your name and mine mixed up in it, he sent for me and asked me about it. And--and you see, Laurie, old chap, I didn’t know all you have just told me, and--” “By Heaven!” said George in a low voice, “you made him think--” “I give you my word, old man, I didn’t _make_ him think anything. But I couldn’t help what he did think. When he heard there was a girl mixed up in it--a sort of creole, I think I said--he went off like soda-water in hot weather, and there was no getting a word in edgeways after that. He asked me finally what the d-- I was standing there for like a moonstruck idiot, or a stuck pig, or a something I didn’t exactly catch. For as soon as he showed by his first words that my presence was no longer soothing, I saluted and scuttled away, as one express journey through the air in the course of an evening is enough for anybody. I believe he sent up to your rooms, but you had gone out by that time.” George listened to this account very gloomily, as the Colonel was the very last person he wished to know anything about his marriage until it was an accomplished fact. He dreaded a summons from Lord Florencecourt; for the next three days he felt a nervous quaking of the heart whenever he was in the neighbourhood of the autocratic little officer. But for some unexplained reason he was not called upon to give an account of himself, and instead, the Colonel seemed to mark his displeasure by the much more welcome means of cold reserve towards him.