"And Mrs. Gissing is awfully good company too," assented the neighbor. Jim Douglas, who was sitting on the other side, looked up quickly. The juxtaposition of the names surprised him after what he had seen, or thought he had seen at Christmas time.
"Is that Mrs. Gissing from Lucknow?" he asked.
"I believe so. She is a stranger here. Seems awfully jolly, but the women don't like her. Do you know anything of her?"
Jim Douglas hesitated. He could have easily satisfied the ear evidently agog for scandal; but what, after all, did he know of her? What did he know of his own experience? It seemed to him as if she stood there, defiantly dignified, asking him the question, her china-blue eyes flashing, the childish face set and stern.
"Personally I know little," he replied, "but that little is very much to her credit."
As he relapsed into silence and smoke he felt that she had once more walked boldly into his consciousness and claimed recognition. She had forced him to acknowledge something in her which corresponded with something in him. Something unexpected. If Kate Erlton's eyes with their cold glint in them had flashed like that, he would not have wondered; but they had not. They had done just the reverse. They had softened; they had only looked heroic. Underneath the glint which had sent him on a wild-goose chase had lain that commonplace indefinable womanhood, sweet enough, but a bit sickly, which could be in any woman's eyes if you fancied yourself in love with her. It had lain in the eyes belonging to the golden curl, in poor little Zora's eyes, might conceivably lie in half a dozen others.
"By George!" came an eager voice from the group of men who were reading their letters by the light of a lamp held for the purpose by a silent bronze image of a man in uniform. "I have some news here which will interest you, sir. There has been a row at Dum-Dum about the new Enfield cartridges."
"Eh! what's that?" asked the Brigadier, looking up from his own correspondence. "Nothing serious, I hope."
"Not yet, but it seems curious by the light of what we were discussing, and what Mr.--er--Capt----"
"Douglas," suggested the owner of the name, who at the first words had sat up to listen intently. His face had a certain anticipation in it; almost an eagerness.