“Does she reciprocate?” and Dr. Camperdown bit his moustache more savagely than ever in order to restrain a smile.
“Not entirely; but—you remember the time I broke my leg, Camperdown, five years ago?”
“Yes, a compound fracture.”
“The time,” scornfully, “that I was fool enough to let Flora Colonibel twist me ’round her little finger.”
“Exactly.”
“I was taken to the Armours’ house you remember, and was fussed over and petted till I loathed the sight of her.”
“Yes,” dryly, “as much as you had previously admired it.”
“By Jove, yes,” said the other with a note of lazy contempt in his voice; “and but for that broken leg, Flora Colonibel would have been Flora Macartney now.”
“Very likely,” said Camperdown grimly; “but what are you harking back to that old story for?”
“It is an odd thing,” went on Captain Macartney with some show of warmth, “that, tame cat as I became out at Pinewood, and bored to death as I was with confidences and family secrets, from the old colonial days down, that one thing only was never revealed to me.”