CHAPTER X.
The next morning, before he was up, George Lauriston was surprised by an apparition in a dressing-gown, with a black eye and a strip of sticking-plaister across its upper lip. It proved to be Clarence Massey, who came up to his bedside to offer to smoke the pipe of peace while yet the soft influence of slumber might be supposed to mollify any desire for vengeance which might haply be still burning in his comrade’s breast. As a matter of fact, George had, before retiring to rest the night before, regretted his violence to the little Irish lad, and was ready to meet him more than half-way. So that when Massey humbly made a clean breast of the trick he had played, valiantly omitting all mention of Dicky Wood’s share in it, and apologised for his intrusion into Lauriston’s quarters the evening before, the latter held out his hand from the bed and told him not to think any more about it.
“I’m awfully sorry I was so rough with you, old chap,” said he. “It was all a misunderstanding from beginning to end. Nouna is so young, and knows so little of the world, that she hasn’t dignity enough yet to awe an Irishman. She’ll know better when she’s married; and if you don’t come to our wedding, at least you must be the first to congratulate us afterwards, Massey, since it was you who brought about our first meeting.”
But Massey’s jaw had dropped.
“Wedding! You don’t really mean you’re going to marry her, Lauriston!” he cried in too evident consternation.
“Certainly I mean it; why not?” said George, very quietly, though he had suddenly grown thoroughly awake.
“Oh, no reason, of course. I beg your pardon. I was only surprised because we hadn’t heard anything about it, you know.”
“There is no reason why the whole regiment should know all one’s affairs,” said George quickly. “And look here, Massey, don’t go and talk about it, there’s a good fellow. You know very well how they all begin to croak if a man marries young, and as I don’t want my wife to meet any of them before it’s necessary, I’d rather they didn’t even hear of it till we’ve had time to look about us,” ended George, who had a nervous dread of the effect the neighbourhood of a pretty woman who was somebody else’s wife had upon several of his fellow-officers.
Massey nodded intelligently two or three times in the course of this speech, but at the end of it he hum’d and ha’d rather dubiously and at last spoke out.
“Well, you see, Lauriston, of course I won’t say a word, but the fact is something about it has got to the Colonel’s ears already.”