at," he called after her, as she sped up the stairs,
"when I see it lying there."

XII

It may be admitted at once that, on arriving at Tory Hill and hearing
from Olivia's lips the tale of her father's downfall, Colonel Rupert
Ashley received the first perceptible check in a very distinguished
career. Up to this point the sobriquet of "Lucky Ashley," by which he
was often spoken of in the Rangers, had been justified by more than one
spectacular success. He had fulfilled so many special missions to
uncivilized and half-civilized and queerly civilized tribes that he had
come to feel as if he habitually went on his way with the might of the
British Empire to back him. It was he who in South Africa brought the
M'popos to order without shedding a drop of blood; it was he who in the
eastern Soudan induced the followers of the Black Prophet to throw in
their lot with the English, securing by this move the safety of Upper
Egypt; it was he who in the Malay Peninsula intimidated the Sultan of
Surak into accepting the British protectorate, thus removing a menace to
the peace of the Straits Settlements. Even if he had had no other
exploits to his credit, these alone would have assured his favor with
the home authorities. It had become something like a habit, at the
Colonial Office or the War Officer or the Foreign Office, as the case
might be, whenever there was trouble on one of the Empire's vague outer
frontiers, to ask, "Where's Ashley?" Wherever he was, at Gibraltar or
Simla or Cairo or at the Rangers' depot in Sussex, he was sent for and
consulted. Once having gained a reputation for skill in handling
barbaric potentates, he knew how to make the most of it, both abroad and
in Whitehall. On rejoining his regiment, too, after some of his
triumphant expeditions, he was careful to bear himself with a modesty
that took the point from detraction, assuring, as it did, his
brother-officers that they would have done as well as he, had they
enjoyed the same chances.

He was not without a policy in this, since from the day of receiving his
commission he had combined a genuine love of his profession with a quite
laudable intention to "get on." He cherished this ambition more
naturally, perhaps, than most of his comrades, who took the profession
of arms lightly, for the reason that the instinct for it might be said
to be in his blood. The Ashleys were not an old county family. Indeed,
it was only a generation or so since they ha