His real concern touched her. Inured to her world of intrigue which had little in it that was so sensitive on the point of honour, she had taken for granted his appreciation of Lady Northby’s potential influence. She was too crafty a diplomatist, however, to let him guess her surprise; still less suspect her little pang of realization that his standards might be just a little higher than her own; or her lightning glance back to her girlhood when her standards were just the same. She gave him smilingly to understand that it was a playful trap she had set for him, so that resentment at an implied accusation was instantaneously submerged beneath a wave of wonder at the gracious beauty of her soul. This boy of twenty, instinctive soldier, half-conscious thereof when he came to exercise his power, could play on fifty rough and violent men as on an instrument, and make them do his bidding lovingly in the ease of camp and follow him in battle into the jaws of hell, as they had done, but he was outclassed in his unwitting struggle with the girl of five-and-twenty, instinctive schemer after power, her clear brain as yet undisturbed by any clamourings of the heart.
Baltazar, desiring to bring brightness into the boy’s life, had brought it with a vengeance. He had not heard of Dorothy. He had no idea of the state of mind of the Rosaline-rejected young Romeo of a son of his. Unconscious of peril, he cast him into the furnace. “An interesting type. A woman of the moment,” commented placid and philosophic Fifty. “Oh! she doth teach the torches to burn bright!” sang Twenty. Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. See the part of Romeo passim. Away with Rosaline! His “love did read by rote and could not spell.” Rosaline-Dorothy was blotted out of his Book of Existence for ever.
“What are your plans?” asked Lady Edna, as soon as the little cloud had melted beneath the very eager sunshine.
“As soon as I get a new foot I’ll spend every day at the War Office until they give me something to do.”
“You oughtn’t to have any difficulty. There are lots of billets going, I know.”
“Yes. But what kind? I’m not going to sit in an office all day filling up forms. I want to get a man’s job. Active service again.”
“How splendid of you!”
Her commendation was something to live for. After the British way, however, he deprecated claims to splendour.
“Not a bit. It’s only that one feels rather rotten doing nothing while other fellows are fighting. They may take me in the Flying Corps. But I’d sooner go where I belong—to the job I know. Perhaps I’m rather an ass to think of it.”
“Not at all. Where there’s a will there’s a way.”