victory, he might have employed a safer, a more Sunday school method. Oh!
the hint was of the slightest, the subtlest, the most delicate. The War
Office very pointedly addressed him as General, and, regarding his row of
ribbons, implicitly declared him an ingrate. But for a certain stoniness
of glance developed in places where Bureaucracy would have been very
frightened, the War Office would have so proclaimed him in explicit speech.

"I would have stayed on as a Brigadier," said he. "But the Major's job's
impossible. I should have thought any soldier would have appreciated the
position--and it was a soldier, a colonel whom I saw--but it seems that if
you stay long enough in that place you're at the mercy of the little
girls who run you round, and eventually you arrive at their level of
intelligence. However," he grinned and lit a cigarette, "it's all over. I
can call myself General Lackaday till the day of my death, but not a sou
does it put into my pocket. And, odd as it may appear, I've got to earn my
living. Well, I suppose something will turn up."

Before I had time to question him as to his plans and prospects, he shifted
the talk to our friends, the Verity-Stewarts. He had stayed with them two
or three times. Once Lady Auriol had again been a fellow guest. He had met
her in London, dined at her tiny house in Charles Street, Mayfair--a little
dinner party, doubtless in his honour--and he had called once or twice.
Evidently the Romance was in the full idyllic stage. I asked somewhat
maliciously what Lady Auriol thought of it. He rose to my question like a
simple fish.

"She's far more indignant than I am, I've had to stop her writing to the
newspapers and sending the old Earl down to the House of Lords."

"Lady Auriol ought to be able to pull some strings," said I.