“Who is he?” asked Mrs. Linforth.

Sir John raised his shoulders.

“I am not concerned,” he replied.  “The explanation is amusing itself, as it ought to do, being only eighteen.  The explanation wants everyone to love her at the present moment.  When she wants only one, then it will be time for me to begin to get flurried.”  He turned abruptly to his companion.  “I would like you to know her.”

“Thank you,” said Mrs. Linforth, as she bowed to an acquaintance.

“Would you like to dance?” asked Sir John.  “If so, I’ll stand aside.”

“No.  I came here to look on,” she explained.

“Lady Marfield,” and she nodded towards their hostess, “is my cousin, and—­well, I don’t want to grow rusty.  You see I have an explanation too—­oh, not here!  He’s at Chatham, and it’s as well to keep up with the world—­” She broke off abruptly, and with a perceptible start of surprise.  She was looking towards the door.  Casson followed the direction of her eyes, and saw young Linforth in the doorway.

At last he remembered.  There had been one hot weather, years ago, when this boy’s father and his newly-married wife had come up to the hill-station of Mussoorie.  He remembered that Linforth had sent his wife back to England, when he went North into Chiltistan on that work from which he was never to return.  It was the wife who was now at his side.

“I thought you said he was at Chatham,” said Sir John, as Dick Linforth advanced into the room.

“So I believed he was.  He must have changed his mind at the last moment.”  Then she looked with a little surprise at her companion.  “You know him?”

“Yes,” said Sir John, “I will tell you how it happened.  I was dining eighteen months ago at the Sappers’ mess at Chatham.  And that boy’s face came out of the crowd and took my eyes and my imagination too.  You know, perhaps, how that happens at times.  There seems to be no particular reason why it should happen at the moment.  Afterwards you realise that there was very good reason.  A great career, perhaps, perhaps only some one signal act, an act typical of a whole unknown life, leaps to light and justifies the claim the young face made upon your sympathy.  Anyhow, I noticed young Linforth.  It was not his good looks which attracted me.  There was something else.  I made inquiries.  The Colonel was not a very observant man.  Linforth was one of the subalterns—­a good bat and a good change bowler.  That was all.  Only I happened to look round the walls of the Sappers’ mess.  There are portraits hung there of famous members of that mess who were thought of no particular account when they were subalterns at Chatham.  There’s one alive to-day.  Another died at Khartoum.”

“Yes,” said Mrs. Linforth.

“Well, I made the acquaintance of your son that night,” said Sir John.

Mrs. Linforth stood for a moment silent, her face for the moment quite beautiful.  Then she broke into a laugh.