little things, unperceived by a generous war society, which pathetically
proved that his world and that of Lady Auriol, for all her earth-wide
Bohemianism, were star distances apart. Little tiny things that one
feels ashamed to record. His swift glance round to assure himself of the
particular knife and fork he should use at a given stage of the meal--the
surreptitious pushing forward on the plate, of the knife which he had
leaned, French fashion, on the edge; his queer distress on entering the
drawing-room--his helplessness until the inevitable and unconscious rescue,
for he was the honoured guest; the restraint, manifest to me, which he
imposed on his speech and gestures. Everyone loved him for his simplicity
of manners. In fact they were natural to the man. He might have saved
himself a world of worry. But his trained observation had made him aware
of the existence of a thousand social solecisms, his sensitive character
shrank from their possible committal, and he employed his mimetic genius
as an instrument of salvation. And then his English--his drawing-room
English--was not spontaneous. It was thought out, phrased, excellent
academic English, not the horrible ordinary lingo that we sling at each
other across a dinner-table; the English, though without a trace of foreign
accent, yet of one who has spent a lifetime in alien lands and has not met
his own tongue save on the printed page; of one, therefore, who not being
sure of the shade of slang admissible in polite circles, carefully and
almost painfully avoids its use altogether.

Yet all through that long weekend--we were pressed to stay till the
Wednesday morning--no one, so far as I know, suspected that Colonel
Lackaday found himself in an unfamiliar and puzzling environment.

His appointment to the Brigade came on the Tuesday. He showed me the
letter, during a morning stroll in the garden.