"You know, Mrs Spencer, it is a little difficult to go back to anything before those awful years of war. But I remember, as in a sort of dream, that, quite as a young man, I was gazetted to the Twenty-fifth Lancers." "A crack regiment, was it not?" queried Mrs Spencer. "My dear father was in the Twenty-fourth." She was keeping it up bravely, he thought. He remembered Fairfax's story. The woman who had said good-bye to a fugitive card-sharper at Charing Cross Station, and kissed him affectionately, was hardly likely to be the daughter of an officer in the Twenty-fourth Lancers. He was not sure of very much, but of this one incident he was absolutely positive: Fairfax was a man who was always certain of his facts. "I can't remember much about the early years; I expect I went through the usual trials and troubles of a young subaltern, was subjected to a good deal of ragging. Well, somehow, promotion came: I was Captain at quite a youthful age. The one thing that sticks in my mind, in those pre-war days, is the fact that we were quartered at Blankfield." Mrs Spencer lifted calm, inquiring eyes. "At Blankfield! And where is that?" "You don't mean to say you haven't heard of Blankfield?" Mrs Spencer shook her dark head. "No; I dare say it shows great ignorance, but I was never good at geography. I was brought up so quietly; I have never travelled. I know next to nothing of my own country, and nothing of any other." She uttered these remarks with a disarming and appealing smile, as if asking pardon from a man of the world for having led such an uneventful and sequestered life--she, as he thought sardonically, the mysterious cousin of Mrs L'Estrange, the affectionate friend of the card-sharper Tommie Esmond. "Blankfield is rather a well-known town in Yorkshire; it is also a garrison town. As I said, it was my lot to be quartered there." "Was it a nice place?" queried Mrs Spencer with an air of polite interest. "In a way, yes; we had a good time. But my recollections of it are distinctly unpleasant. For I had the misfortune to assist at a tragedy--nay, more, to play a part in it--which has left an ineffaceable record upon my memory." Stella Spencer leaned forward. There was no momentary change of expression upon the clear-cut, charming face; her eyes met his own with a calm, steady gaze. But he thought--and after all that might be fancy--he detected a restless movement of her hands. "I shall like to hear about that tragedy, if it is not too painful for you to recall it," she said softly. If she were really what he believed her to be, she was playing the role of sympathetic listener to perfection.