ham and my brother were great friends," Philippa explained.
"Mr. Lessingham used to come down to shoot in Cheshire."

Lady Cranston's guests were all conscious of a little indefinable
disappointment. The gossip concerning this stranger's appearance in
Dreymarsh was practically strangled. Mrs. Johnson, however, fired a
parting shot as she rose to go.

"You were not in the same regiment as Major Felstead, were you, Mr.
Lessingham?" she asked. "No," he answered calmly.

Philippa was busy with her adieux. Mrs. Johnson remained indomitable.

"What was your regiment, Mr. Lessingham?" she persisted. "You must
forgive my seeming inquisitive, but I am so interested in military
affairs."

Lessingham bowed courteously.

"I do not remember alluding to my soldiering at all," he said coolly,
"but as a matter of fact I am in the Guards."

Mrs. Johnson accepted Philippa's hand and the inevitable. Her good-by to
Lessingham was most affable. She walked up the road with the vicar.

"I think, Vicar," she said severely, "that for a small place, Dreymarsh
is becoming one of the worst centres of gossip I ever knew. Every one
has been saying all sorts of unkind things about that charming Mr.
Lessingham, and there you are--Major Felstead's friend and a Guardsman!
Somehow or other, I felt that he belonged to one of the crack regiments.
I shall certainly ask him to dinner one night next week."

The vicar nodded benignly. He had the utmost respect for Mrs. Johnson's
cook, and his own standard of social desirability, to which the object
of their discussion had attained.

"I should be happy to meet Mr. Lessingham at any time," he pronounced,
with ample condescension. "I noticed him in church last Sunday morning."

CHAPTER XX

"My dear man, whatever shall I do with you!" Philippa exclaimed
pathetically, as the door closed upon the last of her callers. "The
Guards, indeed!"

Lessingham smiled as he resumed his place by her side.

"Well," he said, "I told the dear lady the truth. You will find my
name well up in the list of the thirty-first battalion of the Prussian
Guards."

She threw herself back in her chair and laughed. "How amusing it would
be if it weren't all so terrible! You really are a perfect political
Raffles. Do you know that this afternoon you have absolutely
reestablished yourself? Mr. Johnson will probably call on you
to-morrow--they may even ask you to dine--the vicar will write and ask
for a subscription, and