"Tell him I'm goin' to Rochehaut to look up Lettice. It's more his affair than mine." Wandesforde scribbled down the message in his pocket-book. "And tell him—" Denis's voice unexpectedly failed.
Wandesforde held his pencil ready.
"Say I've changed my mind, and I'm goin' to settle up my own affair too, if I'm let. He'll understand."
Wandesforde did not, never having heard of Dorothea in this connection. He had never known Denis make a confidence before. There was a pause; but he still waited. If he knew anything of the signs of the times, more was coming. He was right. The never-ceasing thunder of the guns accompanied and illustrated Denis's next speech.
"Wandesforde, do you believe in a future life?"
Three months earlier, Wandesforde would have answered with a shrug. His point of view had changed. "More or less got to out here, haven't you?" he said soberly.
"I didn't—for the best part of this year."
"What, that time you were playing about with the fair Evey?"
Denis lifted his head. "You knew? Well, I suppose you would. It never struck me—"
"Everybody knew, old thing," said Wandesforde, with an irrepressible grin. He was more touched than he would have cared to admit by Denis's rather truculent confidences, but he could not for his life help finding him deuced funny! "And nobody could think what on earth you were after! It was so very much out of your line, and, if you'll forgive my saying so, you made such a shocking poor hand at it!"