It is exasperating to think how long I have taken to describe events and emotions that passed in the space of a few minutes; but to place all the _dramatis personae_ in their proper positions does take time, unless the stage-manager is very experienced. Will you be good enough to imagine the picnic broken up (_not_ in confusion), and the "strayed revelers" on their way to Dorade? Nothing worthy of note occurred on the spot; a commonplace conversation having been started and maintained in a way equally creditable to all parties concerned. CHAPTER XVII. All the inquiries that the chaplain had "felt it his duty" to make respecting the antecedents of Royston Keene had failed to elicit any thing more discreditable than may be said of the generality of men who have spent a dozen years in rather a fast regiment, keeping up to the standard of the corps. Doubtless graver charges might have been imputed to him, if the whole truth had been known; but the living witnesses who could have proved them had good reasons for their silence. Whether successful or defeated, the Cool Captain was not wont to take the world into his confidence. As for betraying his own or another's secrets--his lips were about as likely to do _that_ as those of an effigy on a tomb-stone. Naples was a cover that the reverend investigator had not drawn; so he was considerably startled by the following words in a letter from thence, received that morning: "I meet a lady constantly in society here, of whose history I am curious to know more. She is the wife of Major Keene, the famous Indian _sabreur_; but has been separated from him for several years. She never makes an allusion to his existence; it was by the merest chance that I heard this, and also that her husband is spending the winter at Dorade. Perhaps you can throw some light on the cause of the 'separate maintenance?' People are not particular here, and have no right to be; still, one would like to know. I fancy it can not be her fault; she is perfectly gentle in her manner, but rather cold--very beautiful too, in a placid, statuesque style." It is not worth transcribing the writer's farther speculations. If a silent, but ultra-fervent benediction can at all profit the person for whom it is intended, very few people have been so well paid for epistolary labor, as was, then, Mr. Fullarton's correspondent. The reason why has already been explained.