“I really do not know, my boy,” said he. “He left very suddenly, and in the sad trouble through which we have passed I have hardly had time to think about him.”
There was a pause. Then Roger said—
“Is he an old friend of yours, cousin Edward?”
Cousin Edward was a little perplexed by this curiosity.
“I have known him a year or so. The friendship, however, is chiefly on his side.”
“I thought he came all the way from India on purpose to visit you?”
The captain laughed uncomfortably at this very correct representation of the facts.
“That is the version he likes to give. The fact is that business brought him home, and as he knew I was at Maxfield, he wrote and proposed the visit. He is no great favourite of yours, I suspect, Roger?”
“No,” said Roger shortly, and relapsed again into silence. But before the journey’s end he once more returned to the charge.
“Was he in the army in India?”