that I am humouring
an invalid if you like. He wants you to know that this affair is by
no means at an end. He intends to send you his seconds directly he has
regained his strength--providing, of course, the army is not in the
field at that time."

"He intends, does he? Why, certainly," spluttered Lieut. D'Hubert in a
passion.

The secret of his exasperation was not apparent to the visitor; but this
passion confirmed the surgeon in the belief which was gaining ground
outside that some very serious difference had arisen between these two
young men, something serious enough to wear an air of mystery, some
fact of the utmost gravity. To settle their urgent difference about that
fact, those two young men had risked being broken and disgraced at the
outset almost of their career. The surgeon feared that the forthcoming
inquiry would fail to satisfy the public curiosity. They would not take
the public into their confidence as to that something which had passed
between them of a nature so outrageous as to make them face a charge of
murder--neither more nor less. But what could it be?

The surgeon was not very curious by temperament; but that question
haunting his mind caused him twice that evening to hold the instrument
off his lips and sit silent for a whole minute--right in the middle of a
tune--trying to form a plausible conjecture.

II

He succeeded in this object no better than the rest of the garrison and
the whole of society. The two young officers, of no especial consequence
till then, became distinguished by the universal curiosity as to the
origin of their quarrel. Madame de Lionne's salon was the centre
of ingenious surmises; that lady herself was for a time assailed by
inquiries as being the last person known to have spoken to these unhappy
and reckless young men before they went out together from her house to
a savage encounter with swords, at dusk, in a private garden. She
protested she had not observed anything unusual in their demeanour.
Lieut. Feraud had been visibly annoyed at being called away. That was
natural enough; no man likes to be disturbed in a conversation with a
lady famed for her elegance and sensibility. But in truth the subject
bored Madame de Lionne, since her personality could by no stretch of
reckless gossip be connected with this affair. And it irritated her to
hear it advanced that there might have been some woman in the case. This
irritation arose, not from her elegance or sensi