ssion the family honour
had not been concerned. The boy had done his best. They blamed not him
but the disastrous training that had unfitted him for the command of
men. They reproached themselves for their haste in throwing him
headlong into the fiercest element of the national struggle towards
efficiency. They could have found an easier school, in which he could
have learned to do his share creditably in the national work. Many
young men of their acquaintance, far more capable than Marmaduke, were
wearing the uniform of a less strenuous branch of the service. It had
been a blunder, a failure, but without loss of honour. But when
slanderous tongues attacked poor Doggie for running away with a yelp
from a little hardship; when a story or two of Doggie's career in the
regiment arrived in Durdlebury, highly flavoured in transit and more
and more poisoned as it went from mouth to mouth; when a legend was
spread abroad that he had bolted from Salisbury Plain and was run to
earth in a Turkish Bath in London, and was only saved from
court-martial by family influence, then the family honour of the
Conovers was wounded to its proud English depths. And they could say
nothing. They had only Doggie's word to go upon; they accepted it
unquestioningly, but they knew no details. Doggie had disappeared.
Naturally, they contradicted these evil rumours. The good folks of
Durdlebury expected them to do so, and listened with well-bred
incredulity. To the question, "Where is he now and what is he going to
do?" they could only answer, "We don't know." They were helpless.

Peggy had a bitter quarrel with one of her intimates, Nancy Murdoch,
daughter of the doctor who had proclaimed the soundness of Marmaduke's
constitution.

"He may have told you so, dear," said Nancy, "but how do you know?"

"Because whatever else he may be, he's not a liar," retorted Peggy.

Nancy gave the most delicate suspicion of a shrug to her pretty
shoulders.

That was the beginning of it. Peggy, naturally combative, armed for
the fight and defended Marmaduke.

"You talk as though you were still engaged to him," said Nancy.

"So I am," declared Peggy rashly.

"Then where's your engagement ring?"

"Where I choose to keep it."

The retort lacked originality and conviction.

"You can't send it back to him, because you don't know where he is.
And what did Mrs. Conover mean by telling mother that Mr. Trevor had
broken off the engagement?"

"She never told h