"Not a woman affair--eh?" growled the colonel, staring hard. "I don't
ask you who or where. All I want to know is whether there is a woman in
it?"
Lieutenant D'Hubert's arms dropped and his weak voice was pathetically
broken.
"Nothing of the kind, mon colonel."
"On your honour?" insisted the old warrior.
"On my honour."
"Very well," said the colonel thoughtfully, and bit his lip. The
arguments of Lieutenant D'Hubert, helped by his liking for the person,
had convinced him. Yet it was highly improper that his intervention, of
which he had made no secret, should produce no visible effect. He kept
Lieutenant D'Hubert a little longer and dismissed him kindly.
"Take a few days more in bed, lieutenant. What the devil does the
surgeon mean by reporting you fit for duty?"
On coming out of the colonel's quarters, Lieutenant D'Hubert said
nothing to the friend who was waiting outside to take him home. He said
nothing to anybody. Lieutenant D'Hubert made no confidences. But in the
evening of that day the colonel, strolling under the elms growing near
his quarters in the company of his second in command opened his lips.
"I've got to the bottom of this affair," he remarked.
The lieutenant-colonel, a dry brown chip of a man with short
side-whiskers, pricked up his ears without letting a sound of curiosity
escape him.
"It's no trifle," added the colonel oracularly. The other waited for a
long while before he murmured:
"Indeed, sir!"
"No trifle," repeated the colonel, looking straight before him.
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