He sank back exhausted on to the pillow. Frank Mallett had made no attempt to interrupt him: the sudden agony of his wound and his astonishment at this strange accusation had given him so grave a shock that he leaned against the wall behind him in silent wonder. "Hello! Mallett, what the deuce is the matter with you?" the surgeon exclaimed, as, looking up from a patient over whom he was bending a short distance away, his eyes fell on the officer's face. "You look as if you were going to faint, man. "Here, orderly, some brandy and water, quickly!" Frank drank some of the brandy and water and sat down for a few minutes. Then, when he saw the surgeon at the other end of the room, he got up and went across to Lechmere's bed. "There is some terrible mistake, Lechmere," he said, quietly. "I swear to you on my honour as a gentleman that you are altogether wrong. From the moment that I got into my dog cart at Bennett's I never saw Martha again. I know nothing whatever of this talk in the garden. Did you think you saw me as well as heard me?" "No, you were on one side of that high wall and I on the other, but I heard enough to know who it was. You told her that you had to go abroad at once, but that if she would come out there you would put her in charge of someone until you could marry her. You told her that she could not stay where she was long, and I knew what that meant. I suppose she is at Calcutta still waiting, for of course she could not have come out with you. I suppose that she is breaking her heart there now--if she is not dead, as I hope she is." "Did you hear the word Calcutta or India mentioned, Lechmere?" "No, I did not, but I heard quite enough. Everyone knew that you were going in a day or two, and that was enough for me after what I had seen in the afternoon." "You saw nothing in the afternoon," Captain Mallett said, angrily. "The girl's father and mother were at home. We were all chatting together until we came out. She came to the trap with me while they stood at the open window. It was not more than a minute before I drove off. I have not spoken to the girl half a dozen times since she was a little child. "Why, man, if everyone took such insane fancies in his head as you do, no man would dare to speak to a woman at all.