buffet, and a prey to imaginary alarms since become real, I should
have been ready to serve her or any woman in distress, but nothing of
this could have happened in the short hour's run so far."

"I thought you were a gentleman," was the scornful rejoinder. "A nice
sort of gentleman, indeed, to sit there like a stock or a stone when a
lady sends for you!"

"A lady!" There was enough sarcasm in my tone to bring a flush upon
her impassive face, a fierce gleam of anger in her stolid eyes; and
when I added, "A fine sort of lady!" I thought she would have struck
me. But she did no more than hiss an insolent gibe.

"You call yourself an officer, a colonel? I call you a bounder, a
common cad."

"Be off!" I was goaded into crying, angrily. "Get away with you; I
want to have nothing more to say to you or your mistress. I know what
you are and what you have been doing, and I prefer to wash my hands of
you both. You're not the kind of people I like to deal with or wish to
know."

She stared at me open-mouthed, her hands clenched, her eyes half out
of her head. Her face had gone deadly white, and I thought she would
have fallen there where she stood, a prey to impotent rage.

Now came a sudden change of scene. The lady, Mrs. Blair, as I had just
heard her called, appeared behind, her taller figure towering above
the maid's, her face in full view, vexed with varying acute emotions,
rage, grief, and terror combined.