his
candour?" thought the Captain. "Would he like to know all about my
grandfather and grandmother, and that I have a cousin who is an earl? If
so, I am afraid he will be disappointed."

"Did you see much service while you were in the army?" asked Platzoff.

"I saw a good deal of hard fighting in the East, although not on any
large scale." Ducie was beginning to get restive. He was not the sort of
man to quietly allow himself to be catechised by a stranger.

"I, too, know something of the East," said Platzoff. "Three of the
happiest years of my life were spent in India. While out there I became
acquainted with several gentlemen of your profession. With Colonel
Leslie I was particularly intimate. I had been stopping with the poor
fellow only a few days before that gallant affair at Ruckapore, in which
he came by his death."

"I remember the affair you speak of," said Ducie. "I was in one of the
other Presidencies at the time it happened."

"There was another officer in poor Leslie's regiment with whom I was
also on very intimate terms. He died of cholera a little later on, and I
attended him in his last moments. I allude to a Captain Charles
Chillington. Did you ever meet with him in your travels?"

Captain Ducie's swarthy cheek deepened its hue. He paused to blow a
speck of cigar ash off his sleeve before he spoke. "I did not know your
Captain Charles Chillington," he said, in slow, deliberate accents.
"Till the present moment I never heard of his existence."

Captain Ducie pulled his Glengarry over his brows, folded his arms, and
shut his eyes. He had evidently made up his mind for a quiet snooze.
Platzoff regarded him with a silent snigger. "Something I have said has
pricked the gallant Captain under his armour," he muttered to himself.
"Is it possible that he and Chillington were acquainted with each other
in India? But what matters it to me if they were?"

When M. Platzoff had smoked his meerschaum to the last whiff, he put it
carefully away, and disposed himself to follow Ducie's example in the
matter of sleep. He rearranged his wraps, folded the arms, shut his
eyes, and pressed his head resolutely against his cushion; but at the
end of five minutes he opened his eyes, and seemed just as wakeful as
before. "These beef-fed Englishmen seem as if they can sleep whenever
and wherever they choose. Enviable faculty! I daresay the heifers on
which they gorge possess it in almost as great perfection."

Hidden awa