In the failure of Marmaduke to retain his commission the family honour had not been concerned. The boy had done his best. They blamed not him but the disastrous training that had unfitted him for the command of men. They reproached themselves for their haste in throwing him headlong into the fiercest element of the national struggle towards efficiency. They could have found an easier school, in which he could have learned to do his share creditably in the national work. Many young men of their acquaintance, far more capable than Marmaduke, were wearing the uniform of a less strenuous branch of the service. It had been a blunder, a failure, but without loss of honour. But when slanderous tongues attacked poor Doggie for running away with a yelp from a little hardship; when a story or two of Doggie's career in the regiment arrived in Durdlebury, highly flavoured in transit and more and more poisoned as it went from mouth to mouth; when a legend was spread abroad that he had bolted from Salisbury Plain and was run to earth in a Turkish Bath in London, and was only saved from court-martial by family influence, then the family honour of the Conovers was wounded to its proud English depths. And they could say nothing. They had only Doggie's word to go upon; they accepted it unquestioningly, but they knew no details. Doggie had disappeared. Naturally, they contradicted these evil rumours. The good folks of Durdlebury expected them to do so, and listened with well-bred incredulity. To the question, "Where is he now and what is he going to do?" they could only answer, "We don't know." They were helpless. Peggy had a bitter quarrel with one of her intimates, Nancy Murdoch, daughter of the doctor who had proclaimed the soundness of Marmaduke's constitution. "He may have told you so, dear," said Nancy, "but how do you know?" "Because whatever else he may be, he's not a liar," retorted Peggy. Nancy gave the most delicate suspicion of a shrug to her pretty shoulders. That was the beginning of it. Peggy, naturally combative, armed for the fight and defended Marmaduke. "You talk as though you were still engaged to him," said Nancy. "So I am," declared Peggy rashly. "Then where's your engagement ring?" "Where I choose to keep it." The retort lacked originality and conviction. "You can't send it back to him, because you don't know where he is. And what did Mrs. Conover mean by telling mother that Mr. Trevor had broken off the engagement?" "She never told her any such thing," cried Peggy mendaciously. For Mrs. Conover had committed the indiscretion under assurance of silence. "Pardon me," said Nancy, much on her dignity. "Of course I understand your denying it. It isn't pleasant to be thrown over by any man--but by a man like Doggie Trevor----" "You're a spiteful beast, Nancy, and I'll never speak to you again. You've neither womanly decency nor Christian feeling." And Peggy marched out of the doctor's house.