'I have heard of this fellow, Harvey Desmond, before,' said Chute, musingly. 'I remember his name when I was in the Household Brigade. He was lately, I think, gazetted a C.B.'
'Of course.'
'For what?'
'In consideration of his great services at Wormwood Scrubs and on Wimbledon Common.'
To see Clare on his drag, even with his sister, the Hon. Evelyn, to play propriety, stung Trevor Chute, and, as if divining his very thoughts, Jerry Vane said, let us hope unintentionally:
'All the clubs have linked their names together for some time past.'
'Well,' replied Trevor, with something like a malediction, as he proceeded in a vicious manner to manipulate a cigar, and bite off the end of it. 'What the deuce does that matter to me?'
His expression of face, however, belied the indifference he affected for the moment, and feeling that he had caused pain by his remark, Jerry Vane said, as they walked arm and arm along Piccadilly, by the side of the Green Park:
'Neither of us have been very successful in our love affairs with the Collingwoods; and with me even more than you, Trevor, it was a case of "love's labours lost." Yet, when I think of all that Ida Collingwood was in the past time to me, I cannot help feeling maudlin over it. We had, time to me, I cannot help feeling maudlin over it. We had, as you know well, been engaged a year when, unluckily, Beverley, of your corps, became a friend of the family. I know not by what magic he swayed her mind, her heart, and all her thoughts, but, from the first day she knew him, I felt that I was thrown over and that she was lost to me for ever! And on that day when she became Beverley's wife——'
In the bitterness of his heart Vane paused, for his voice became tremulous.