So much I think a proper etiquette may allow. But it
would never do for me to be paying visits upon ladies so soon after
an affair of so deplorable a gravity. Besides I have to be buried
at seven in the morning, and if I chanced not to be back in time, I
should certainly acquire a reputation for levity, which since I am
unknown in the county, I am unwilling to incur," and, leaving the
butler stupefied in the hall, he ran out into the road. He heard no
sound of pursuit.

THE COWARD.

I.

"Geoffrey," said General Faversham, "look at the clock!"

The hands of the clock made the acutest of angles. It was close upon
midnight, and ever since nine the boy had sat at the dinner-table
listening. He had not spoken a word, indeed had barely once stirred in
the three hours, but had sat turning a white and fascinated face upon
speaker after speaker. At his father's warning he waked with a shock
from his absorption, and reluctantly stood up.

"Must I go, father?" he asked.

The General's three guests intervened in a chorus. The conversation
was clear gain for the lad, they declared,--a first taste of powder
which might stand him in good stead at a future time. So Geoffrey was
allowed furlough from his bed for another half-hour, and with his face
supported between his hands he continued to listen at the table.
The flames of the candles were more and more blurred with a haze of
tobacco smoke, the room became intolerably hot, the level of the
wine grew steadily lower in the decanters, and the boy's face took a
strained, quivering look, his pallour increased, his dark, wide-opened
eyes seemed preternaturally large.

The stories were all of that terrible winter in the Crimea, now ten
years past, and a fresh story was always in the telling before its
predecessor was ended. For each of the four men had borne his share
of that winter's wounds and privations. It was still a reality rather
than a memory to them; they could feel, even in this hot summer
evening and round this dinner-table, the chill of its snows, and the
pinch of famine. Yet their recollections were not all of hardships.
The Major told how the subalterns, of whom he had then been one, had
cheerily played cards in the trenches three hundred yards from the
Malakoff. One of the party was always told off to watch for shells
from the fort's guns. If a black speck was seen in the midst of the
cannon smoke, then the sentinel shouted, and a rush was made for
safety, f