understanding face.

"Captain Granet was a stranger to me," he assented. "One is
naturally interested in soldiers, however."

"You must have met thousands like him," she remarked,--"good-looking,
very British, keen sportsman, lots of pluck, just a little careless,
hating to talk about himself and serious things. I have known him
since he was a boy."

Major Thomson continued to be gravely interested.

"Granet!" he said to himself thoughtfully, "Do I know any of his
people, I wonder?"

"You know some of his connections, of course," Mrs. Cunningham
replied briskly. "Sir Alfred Anselman, for instance, his uncle."

"His father and mother?"

"They are both dead. There is a large family place in Warwickshire,
and a chateau, just now, I am afraid, in the hands of the Germans. It
was somewhere quite close to the frontier. Lady Granet was an
Alsatian. He was to have gone out with the polo team, you know, to
America, but broke a rib just as they were making the selection. He
played cricket for Middlesex once or twice, too and he was Captain of
Oxford the year that they did so well."

"An Admirable Crichton," Major Thomson murmured.