"Was your horse called 'Sultan'?"
"Yes. I bought him in Meerut, trained him myself, and ferried him all the way to China. I loved him next to the British Army."
This was quite satisfactory. There was genuine feeling in his voice now. Iris became even more interested.
"Colonel Costobell fell ill, and the command of the regiment devolved upon me, our only major being absent in the interior. The Colonel's wife unhappily chose that moment to flirt, as people say, with Lord Ventnor. Not having learnt the advisability of minding my own business, I remonstrated with her, thus making her my deadly enemy. Lord Ventnor contrived an official mission to a neighboring town and detailed me for the military charge. I sent a junior officer. Then Mrs. Costobell and he deliberately concocted a plot to ruin me—he, for the sake of his old animosity—you remember that I had also crossed his path in Egypt—she, because she feared I would speak to her husband. On pretence of seeking my advice, she inveigled me at night into a deserted corner of the Club grounds at Hong Kong. Lord Ventnor appeared, and as the upshot of their vile statements, which created an immediate uproar, I—well, Miss Deane, I nearly killed him."
Iris vividly recalled the anguish he betrayed when this topic was inadvertently broached one day early in their acquaintance. Now he was reciting his painful history with the air of a man far more concerned to be scrupulously accurate than aroused in his deepest passions by the memory of past wrongs. What had happened in the interim to blunt these bygone sufferings? Iris clasped her locket. She thought she knew.
"The remainder may be told in a sentence," he said. "Of what avail were my frenzied statements against the definite proofs adduced by Lord Ventnor and his unfortunate ally? Even her husband believed her and became my bitter foe. Poor woman! I have it in my heart to pity her. Well, that is all. I am here!"
"Can a man be ruined so easily?" murmured the girl, her exquisite tact leading her to avoid any direct expression of sympathy.
"It seems so. But I have had my reward. If ever I meet Mrs. Costobell again I will thank her for a great service."
Iris suddenly became confused. Her brow and neck tingled with a quick access of color.
"Why do you say that?" she asked; and Jenks, who was rising, either did not hear, or pretended not to hear, the tremor in her tone.