ve been years getting over it."

The rasp had gone out of his voice. He was speaking in a pleasant,
confidential tone, and Mr. Flexen did not believe a word he said. At the
least he was exaggerating the distress he would have felt at leaving the
Army; but Mr. Flexen had the strongest feeling that he would have felt
next to no distress at all. Again he was astonished. Colonel Grey was
lying to him just as Lady Loudwater had lied. What could be their reason?
What on earth had they done?

He kept his astonishment out of his face, and said in a sympathetic
voice: "Yes, I can see that. And then, again, it would have been painful
and very unpleasant to feel that your thoughtlessness had landed Lady
Loudwater in the Divorce Court."

"Oh, Lord, no!" said Colonel Grey quickly. "There was no chance of any
divorce proceedings. Even for a divorce case, at any rate one brought by
the husband, there must be _some_ grounds; he must have _some_ evidence.
The cock-and-bull story of a gamekeeper is hardly enough to found a
divorce case on, is it?"

"Oh, I don't know. The gamekeeper might convince a jury. You know what
juries are. You can never tell what form their stupidity will take," said
Mr. Flexen.

"But apart from the lack of evidence, there was no chance of a divorce
case. I tell you, Loudwater hadn't got it in him," said Grey
confidently. "He'd have threatened and been abusive. He'd have gone on
throwing that cock-and-bull story at Lady Loudwater for as long as she
continued to stick to him; but it would have stopped at that. His
infernal temper never went any deeper than his lungs. Lady Loudwater had
nothing to fear."

"Yet you think that he would have done his best to hound you out of the
Army?" said Mr. Flexen, finding this conception of Lord Loudwater as a
harmless, if violent, vapourer somewhat inconsistent.

"That's quite another matter," said Grey quickly. "It merely meant using
his influence behind my back with some scurvy politician. There wouldn't
have been any publicity attached to that, any exposure of his bullying.
He'd have done that all right."

"I should have thought that a man of Lord Loudwater's violent temper
would rather have sought an open row," Mr. Flexen persisted.

"Of course--if he'd been really violent. But he wasn't, I tell you. He
was only a blustering bully where women and servants were
concerned--people he could cow. I tell you, I made it quite clear that he
crumpled up directly you stood u