d he had the Royal Humane Society's
medal with a clasp. That meant, apparently, that he had twice jumped off
the deck of a troopship to rescue what the girl called "Tommies", who
had fallen overboard in the Red Sea and such places. He had been twice
recommended for the V.C., whatever that might mean, and, although owing
to some technicalities he had never received that apparently coveted
order, he had some special place about his sovereign at the coronation.
Or perhaps it was some post in the Beefeaters'. She made him out like a
cross between Lohengrin and the Chevalier Bayard. Perhaps he was.... But
he was too silent a fellow to make that side of him really decorative. I
remember going to him at about that time and asking him what the D.S.O.
was, and he grunted out:

"It's a sort of a thing they give grocers who've honourably supplied the
troops with adulterated coffee in war-time"--something of that sort. He
did not quite carry conviction to me, so, in the end, I put it directly
to Leonora. I asked her fully and squarely--prefacing the question with
some remarks, such as those that I have already given you, as to the
difficulty one has in really getting to know people when one's intimacy
is conducted as an English acquaintanceship--I asked her whether her
husband was not really a splendid fellow--along at least the lines
of his public functions. She looked at me with a slightly awakened
air--with an air that would have been almost startled if Leonora could
ever have been startled.

"Didn't you know?" she asked. "If I come to think of it there is not
a more splendid fellow in any three counties, pick them where you
will--along those lines." And she added, after she had looked at me
reflectively for what seemed a long time:

"To do my husband justice there could not be a better man on the earth.
There would not be room for it--along those lines."

"Well," I said, "then he must really be Lohengrin and the Cid in one
body. For there are not any other lines that count."

Again she looked at me for a long time.

"It's your opinion that there are no other lines that count?" she asked
slowly.

"Well," I answered gaily, "you're not going to accuse him of not being a
good husband, or of not being a good guardian to your ward?"

She spoke then, slowly, like a person who is listening to the sounds
in a sea-shell held to her ear--and, would you believe it?--she told me
afterwards that, at that speech of mine, for the firs