"You were a soldier? I always thought so."
"And he put me on honour never to touch a card again—and helped and—saved me."
"Mine breaks a chap," the boy said wearily. "Chauffeurs get good pay, they say. I might be that, mightn't I?"
"What you have to do now is to raise this money, cut the whole thing, before it comes to your chief's ears, and go straight. He won't stand this kind of thing. I've heard him say it's incurable. But nothing is—except cruelty, perhaps. Yes; this money must be raised at once."
"But how?" the boy asked, looking up with wondering eyes and a gleam of incredulous hope.
De Konski was silent, smoking steadily with long, even puffs, and staring with close-drawn brows at the sea, over which the black hulls of battle-ships were now ranged in lines and squadrons half-hidden by the smoke of their guns, beginning to boom in the opening thunders of sham fight.
"But how?" the lad repeated, impatiently scanning the thoughtful face, that seemed to seek solution of the problem from those smoke-hidden monsters upon the velvety blue.
The firing was too fierce and incessant for any speech to be audible for some seconds; then it suddenly stopped, and de Konski turned and was about to reply, when his attention was arrested by the sound of a high treble voice coming round the bend of the rock-strewn bank on which they were sitting, screened from the sight of those approaching from Turbia. Many had come thence and passed in the last half-hour on their way to see the review off Villafranca.
"It's notorious," the high voice proclaimed. "She tried to pass as the wife of the Allonby, the 'Storm and Stress' man, and took everybody in till I asked her straight out one day, and caught her on the hop. She was so taken aback that she let out she was not his wife at all—only a connexion by marriage. And I don't believe she's even that, or Mrs. Allonby at all, or Mrs. Anybody. Miss Nobody-in-particular, I should say. They ought to be more careful who they take in at these small hotels. Fast? Rather. A regular Monty harpy; lives on the tables, they say. That poor young Isidore is infatuated—absolutely. It's the talk of the hotel. She scarcely lets him out of her sight. One is always stumbling upon the pair—looking unutterable things at each other. Quite unpleasant for us. Pretty? That sort always are. But as for manners, and good breeding—well, anything goes down with foreigners and silly old owls like Welbourne. You know she has broken off Isidore's engagement."
The fair being who originated these remarks, having her face slightly turned to her companion, had not observed the presence of the two men screened by the bend of the bank on which they sat. Nor would the younger man have given a thought to these two ladies, but for the effect they produced upon his companion, who started and listened with blazing eyes and tense interest to every word that rang out on the still air. Not content with hearing what was said in passing, he rose, as if drawn by the voice, and followed the quick English steps, quickly outpacing them. Then, planting himself in front of the two ladies and raising his broad felt hat, he brought them to a standstill.