did.

"And on the same occasion, Ormonde, you
begged me to promise that if ever you could serve
me in any way, I would ask for your help. You
were a dear romantic boy then, Ormonde, and I
loved you in a different way, and cried all night
that you and I could not be friends without thought
of love, and I most solemnly promised that I would
turn to you if I ever needed help that you could give.
(Alas, I thought to myself then that nobody in the
world could do anything for me that Dam could
not do, and that I should never need help from
others while he lived.)

"I want your help, Ormonde, and I want it for
Dam--and me.

"You have, of course, heard some garbled scandal
about his being driven away from home and cut off
from Sandhurst by grandfather. I need not ask if
you have believed ill of him and I need not say he
is absolutely innocent of any wrong or failure whatever.
He is _not_ an effeminate coward, he is as
brave as a lion. He is a splendid hero, Ormonde,
and I want you to simply strangle and kill any man
who says a word to the contrary.

"When he left home, he enlisted, and Haddon
Berners saw him in uniform at Folkestone where
he had gone from Canterbury (cricket week) to
see Amelia Harringport's gang. Amelia whose
sister is to be the Reverend Mrs. Canon Mellifle at
Folkestone, you know, met the wretched Haddon
being rushed along the front by a soldier and
nearly died at the sight--she declares he was
weeping!

"Directly she told me I guessed at once that he
had met Dam and either insulted or cut him, and
that poor Dam, in his bitter humour and self-loathing
had used his own presence as a punishment
and had made the Haddock walk with him!
Imagine the company of Damocles de Warrenne
being anything but an ennobling condescension!
Fancy Dam's society a horrible injury and disgrace!
To a thing like Haddon Berners!

"Well, I simply haunted Folkestone after that,
and developed a love for Amelia Harringport and
her brothers that surprised them--hypocrite that I
am! (but I was punished when they talked slightingly
of Dam and she sneered at the man whom
she had shamelessly pursued when all was well
with him. She 'admires' Haddon now.)

"At last I met him on one of my week-end visits--on
a Sunday evening it was--and I simply flew
at him in the sight of all respectable, prayer-book-displaying,
before-C