"Yes; and he seemed to think it a good joke."

Mrs. Agar was shuffling about in the chair as if in pain.

Then she asked again in a strangely metallic voice, "Did he say that
he--did not love her?"

"Yes, the cad!"

"He cannot have been a nice man," she said, with that evenness of
enunciation which betrays that the tongue is speaking without the direct
aid of the mind.

The young officer rose with a glance towards the clock.

"No," he said, "he was not. He did other things afterwards which made it
quite impossible for a man with any self-respect whatever to look upon
him as a friend."

"Did he," asked Mrs. Agar, "say anything about her personal appearance?
Was it that?"

The subaltern looked puzzled. It was as well for Mrs. Agar that he was
not a man of deep experience. Instead of being puzzled he might suddenly
have seen clear.

"No--no," he replied. "It was not that. It was merely a matter of
expediency, I believe."

But, womanlike, Mrs. Agar did not believe him. She sat while he made his