“You have dropped some—­some linen,” he said, stooping down to pick the mysterious articles up.

“Oh, yes, thank you,” answered his visitor, “I find the sun a little hot at this time of the year.  There is nothing like a few handkerchiefs or a towel to keep it off,” and he rolled the mass of napery into a ball, and cramming it back into the crown, replaced the hat on his head in such a fashion that about eight inches of white napkin hung down behind.  “You must have felt it in Egypt,” he went on —­“the sun I mean.  It’s a bad climate, that Egypt, as I have good reason to know,” and he pointed again to his white hat, which Harold Quaritch now observed for the first time was encircled by a broad black band.

“Ah, I see,” he said, “I suppose that you have had a loss.”

“Yes, sir, a very heavy loss.”

Now Colonel Quaritch had never heard that Mr. de la Molle had more than one child, Ida de la Molle, the young lady whose face remained so strongly fixed in his memory, although he had scarcely spoken to her on that one occasion five long years ago.  Could it be possible that she had died in Egypt?  The idea sent a tremor of fear through him, though of course there was no real reason why it should.  Deaths are so common.

“Not—­not Miss de la Molle?” he said nervously, adding, “I had the pleasure of seeing her once, a good many years ago, when I was stopping here for a few days with my aunt.”

“Oh, no, not Ida, she is alive and well, thank God.  Her brother James.  He went all through that wretched war which we owe to Mr. Gladstone, as I say, though I don’t know what your politics are, and then caught a fever, or as I think got touched by the sun, and died on his way home.  Poor boy!  He was a fine fellow, Colonel Quaritch, and my only son, but very reckless.  Only a month or so before he died, I wrote to him to be careful always to put a towel in his helmet, and he answered, in that flippant sort of way he had, that he was not going to turn himself into a dirty clothes bag, and that he rather liked the heat than otherwise.  Well, he’s gone, poor fellow, in the service of his country, like many of his ancestors before him, and there’s an end of him.”

And again the old man sighed, heavily this time.

“And now, Colonel Quaritch,” he went on, shaking off his oppression with a curious rapidity that was characteristic of him, “what do you say to coming up to the Castle for your dinner?  You must be in a mess here, and I expect that old Mrs. Jobson, whom my man George tells me you have got to look after you, will be glad enough to be rid of you for to-night.  What do you say?—­take the place as you find it, you know.  I believe that there is a leg of mutton for dinner if there is nothing else, because instead of minding his own business I saw George going off to Boisingham to fetch it this morning.  At least, that is what he said he was going for; just an excuse to gossip and idle, I fancy.”