y your
neighbours' characters, don't do it at the top of your voices with
window and door wide open. We could hear you all down the road.
Couldn't we, Driffield?"

"Mr Driffield sets a higher value on his immortal soul than you do on
yours, Dick," retorted Mrs Fullerton loftily. "Consequently he isn't
going to back you in your--ahem!--unveracity."

"No. But he's dying of thirst, Lucy. So am I."

She laughed, and took the hint. Then as the two men put down their
glasses, Fullerton went on--

"Talking of the gloves--that reminds me of another time when Lamont
climbed down. That time he put on the gloves with Voss. It was a
beautiful spar, and really worth seeing. Then, just as the fun was at
its height, Lamont suddenly turned quite white--as white as such a
swarthy beggar can turn, that is--and chucked up the sponge then and
there."

"Yes. I remember that. It looked rum certainly--but all the same I'll
maintain that Lamont's no coward. He showed no sign of it in the war of
'93 anyway. If anything rather the reverse."

"Ah!" exclaimed Clare significantly.

"May have lost his nerve since," said her brother-in-law, also
significantly.

"Well, I like Lamont," said Driffield decidedly.

"I don't," said Fullerton, equally so.

"Mind you, he's a chap who wants knowing a bit," went on the Native
Commissioner. "Then he's all right."

"Is he coming to the race meeting, Mr Driffield?" said Clare.

"Yes. He didn't intend to, though, until I gave him your message, Miss
Vidal. We pointed out to him that he couldn't stop away after that."

"Message! But I sent him no message."

"Oh, Miss Vidal! Come now--think again."

"Really, Mr Driffield, I ought to be very angry with you for twisting
my words like that," laughed Clare. "But--you mean well, so let it
pass. You are forgiven."

"Talking of Lamont," struck in Fullerton, who had a wearisome way of
harking back to a subject long after everybody else had done with it,
"there's a yarn going about that he had to leave his own neighbourhood
in England for showing the white feather. And it looks like it,
remembering what a close Johnny he is about himself."

Driffield looked up quickly.

"I believe I know who put that yarn about," he said. "Wasn't it
Ancram--that new man who's putting up at Foster's?"

"Most likely," said Fullerton. "I never heard it myself till a day or
two ago."

"Why, what a sweep the fellow must be," declared Driffield. "La