His lordship dropped his bantering air.
“Do you really imagine, Grant,” he said seriously, “that either she or I will ever forget what you did for Arthur at Peshawar?”
The other man reddened.
“A mere schoolboy episode,” he growled.
“Yes, in a sense. Yet Arthur told me that he had a revolver in his pocket when you met him that night at the mess and persuaded him to leave the business in your hands. You saved our boy, Grant. Gad, ask Mollie what she thinks!”
“Has he been steady since?”
“A rock, my dear chap—adamant where women are concerned. His mother is beginning to worry about him; he wouldn’t look at Helen Forbes, and Madge Bolingbrooke does her skirt-dances in vain. Both deuced nice girls, too.”
Colonel Grant had navigated the talk into a safe channel, and kept it there. He never spoke of the past.
At dinner a man asked him if he was reading the Elmsdale sensation. He had not even heard of it, so the tale of Betsy and George Pickering, of Martin Bolland and Angèle Saumarez was poured into his ears.
“I am interested,” said his neighbor, “because I knew poor Pickering. He hunted regularly with the York and Ainsty.”