“Yes, yes; a very fair lot indeed. I suppose there’s a tidy number of men in the field by now?”
“Too many. If it depended on mere numbers, the war would be finished to-morrow; but it’s the management—we always break down in that. If we were allowed to go ahead in our own way, we should do the thing properly; but there’s such a tremendous lot of red-tape and despatch-writing that the forces are kept doing nothing for weeks, eating their heads off in camp. By the way, have you heard anything more about your application?”
“No, nothing. I suppose I shall in a day or two.”
They talked about the war for a little longer, and criticised the Government, the tactics, and the Commandant-General, and all connected with the campaign, and then Truscott got up to leave. He was sorry, he said, but he could not wait; perhaps another day he would be more fortunate. And so, with a cordial hand-shake from his host, on whom he had made a golden impression, he took himself off.
“I like that fellow!” said Payne, returning to the room. “No nonsense about him.”
“He can be very pleasant,” assented Lilian, ambiguously.
Doubtless the reader is wondering how Truscott got out of durance vile, whither he had just been consigned when last we saw him. The method of his liberation is immaterial to this narrative; suffice it that he did get out—obviously, since here he is, at large in Grahamstown. And now, as he walks away from Payne’s door, he is turning over in his mind the results of the speculation. So far, he is bound to admit, they are not promising. His influence with Lilian is evidently dead, and to revive it, he feels, will be no easy task; but that everything depends upon his ability to revive it he is only too fully aware. Moreover, there is an additional incentive to success which hitherto he had left entirely out of his calculations. He was prepared to find Lilian “gone off” in appearance; a number of years like that—how many he did not care to reckon—are apt to tell. But the hand of Time, so far from buffeting, had been laid caressingly on the soft but stately beauty, which had grown graver, indeed, but far more sweet and attractive than in the earlier days of girlhood; and when he met her eyes that morning in the crowd a thrill shot through him as he thought how luck might throw into his hands, at one coup, such loveliness combined with such a reversion. Might? It should! And now, as he walked down the street, he revolved and elaborated his plans. He had never seen this lover of hers, who, he more than feared, would be no ordinary rival; but then the fact of his absence was an immense advantage. He might be killed in action, as the light-hearted Chadwick had airily remarked; and there’s many a true word spoken in jest, as we all know. But putting aside this contingency into the category of exceptional luck, he—Truscott—had other cards to play, and that warily, for he would not endanger success by any rash move. If the worst came to the worst, he could always use the double-edged weapon which chance had thrown into his hand in the shape of his scoundrelly friend, Sharkey; but win he must. Meanwhile, he would begin by sedulously ignoring Lilian’s engagement. He would show her the most marked attentions—in fact, compromise her—till at length this absent lover of hers should hear of it, and hear of it, too, in such a way that a split would be inevitable. Not that he intended to do this all at once—oh, no. He would take time, and the while his rival might be removed to a better sphere by accident or—well, things could not always be helped.
So he lost no time in calling again at the Paynes’; and having, with the attractive manner that he could so well assume, won the heart of that honest frontiersman, set himself to lay siege to that of his hostess, and succeeded. Not altogether, for Annie Payne was a shrewd little woman, and though she found this new acquaintance pleasant and amusing, watched him narrowly. She remembered the look which had passed between him and Lilian, and held her true opinion of him in reserve. Meanwhile, she waited and watched.
In his intercourse with Lilian, too, he was all that was kind and thoughtful—scarcely ever referring to the past, and only then with a half regretful, half aggrieved air that was the perfection of acting. But somehow or other he was seldom away from her. If she went out, she was sure to meet Truscott; if she stayed at home, he was sure to call; or Payne would pick him up in the street—of course, by chance—and bring him home to lunch; and though she avoided him as much as she possibly could, without being rude, yet somehow it seemed to her that she was never seen in public without this man at her side, till at last the gossips used to say to each other, with a wink and a smile, that “it was a very convenient arrangement to have a lover away at the front, my dear, whose place could be so well supplied; and that really Miss Strange, for all her demureness, was no better than the rest,” and so on. Which tattle, however, fortunately or unfortunately, never reached Lilian’s ears; and the intimacy between Truscott and the house of Payne grew apace. Not that this state of things had come about all at once—Truscott was far too cautious for that; on the contrary, it had been one of the most gradual growth—so gradual, indeed, that the plotter had been inclined to blame himself for dilatoriness; but it was a fault in the right direction. So he bided his time, and was rewarded. Things were progressing as smoothly as he could wish.