"Don't tell anybody, please," said he.

"Of course not." I could not repress an ironical glance, thinking of Lady
Auriol. "If you would prefer to make the announcement your own way."

He gasped, looking down upon me from his lean height. "My dear fellow--it's
the very last thing I want to do. I've told you because I let the thing out
a day or two ago--in peculiar circumstances--but it's in confidence."

"Confidence be hanged," said I.

Heaven sent me Evadne--just escaped from morning lessons with her
governess, and scuttling across the lawn to visit her Sealyhams. I whistled
her to heel. She raced up.

"If you were a soldier what would you do if you were made a General?"

She countered me with the incredulous scorn bred of our familiarity.

"You haven't been made a General?"

"I haven't," I replied serenely. "But Colonel Lackaday has."

She looked wide-eyed up into Lackaday's face.

"Is that true?"

I swear he blushed through his red sun-glaze.

"Since Captain Hylton says so----"