Pomfret thought it had been a very pleasant, enlightening conversation. Norah seemed to have been perfectly frank about their past and their present position. She did not pretend to be anything but what she was, the daughter of a spendthrift father, living on what was practically the charity of a good-hearted brother. And that brother was indebted for his good fortune to a relative who must have been a man of the people. While the two young people were having this confidential chat, Mr. Burton was making himself agreeable to the other guest, in his doubtless well-meant, but somewhat undiplomatic, fashion. "I do envy you young fellows when I see you walking about as if the world belonged to you." Hugh drew himself up stiffly. "I was not in the least aware that any one of us conveyed that impression." "No offence meant, I assure you." Hugh's tone showed him that he had been guilty of bad taste: a blessing Norah had not heard--she would have given him a bad quarter of an hour later on. "But all army men, I think, get a certain kind of swagger. Oh, nothing overbearing or unpleasant about it, of course. They are made so much of that there is no wonder if they do fancy themselves a bit. I'm sure I should if I were one of them." Murchison made no comment on this frank statement, and the other man rambled on in desultory fashion. "It's the life I wanted. As a boy I longed to grow up quickly and go into the army. There was a fair chance of it then, when the old man had still got a bit of money left. But by the time I was old enough the idea had to be knocked on the head. I had to go into a dingy stockbroking office instead." Hugh pricked up his ears at the announcement. He had not suspected that the man would be so communicative about his past. Of course he had gone as a clerk. If his father was not well-off enough to put him in the army neither could he have afforded to buy him a share in a business. "Yes," pursued Mr. Burton, "it was an awful come down after the dreams I had indulged in." "It must have been a very bitter disappointment," assented Hugh politely, in spite of his firm conviction that the army was the very last profession in the world suited to a man of his host's obvious peculiarities. "I should have been awfully keen on soldiering," pursued Mr. Burton, under the impression that he had discovered a sympathetic listener. "Don't you consider it a splendid life?" "There are many things in its favour, certainly," was the rather frigid reply. "But, after all, I don't think I should have cared to be in the line; there's not the same glamour about it, is there? You fellows in the cavalry, in a crack regiment like yours, must see the rosy side of life." He heaved a sigh. "And, of course, you've all got pots of money to grease the wheels." Hugh fidgeted perceptibly. How very vulgar the man was, with an innate vulgarity that nothing would ever eradicate. But his host, absorbed in his own reflections, did not observe the movement.