the wedding. A stout woman in a highly emotional condition would have
been an incongruous companion to his slim, upright figure, moving with
just that unexaggerated swing and balance becoming to a lancer of the
old school, even if he has been on the retired list for sixteen years.

Poor Betty! He thought of her with irritated sympathy--she need not have
given way to tears on the door-step. She might well feel lost now Gyp
was gone, but not so lost as himself! His pale-gloved hand--the one real
hand he had, for his right hand had been amputated at the wrist--twisted
vexedly at the small, grizzling moustache lifting itself from the
corners of his firm lips. On this grey February day he wore no overcoat;
faithful to the absolute, almost shamefaced quietness of that wedding,
he had not even donned black coat and silk hat, but wore a blue suit and
a hard black felt. The instinct of a soldier and hunting man to exhibit
no sign whatever of emotion did not desert him this dark day of his
life; but his grey-hazel eyes kept contracting, staring fiercely,
contracting again; and, at moments, as if overpowered by some deep
feeling, they darkened and seemed to draw back in his head. His face was
narrow and weathered and thin-cheeked, with a clean-cut jaw, small
ears, hair darker than the moustache, but touched at the side wings with
grey--the face of a man of action, self-reliant, resourceful. And his
bearing was that of one who has always been a bit of a dandy, and paid
attention to "form," yet been conscious sometimes that there were things
beyond. A man, who, preserving all the precision of a type, yet had in
him a streak of something that was not typical. Such often have tragedy
in their pasts.

Making his way towards the park, he turned into Mount Street. There was
the house still, though the street had been very different then--the
house he had passed, up and down, up and down in the fog, like a ghost,