he loved still, as he knew that Dick loved him. Dick would not fail. He would bring Andree back to that justice which had waited her over-long. And Andree loved him. Tempest did not dare let himself think for many minutes on that flight and the return. He got up and went out through the grey chill dusk to borrow a mess suit from Charteris or Bayne or someone else.
Charteris could not lend, because he also was going to dinner at the Ferrar's; but he arranged the matter for Tempest, insisted on his dressing at the Bachelor Quarters, and walked over with him afterwards. Charteris was a good-natured, obtuse man with a tendency to spread himself over the affairs of others, and he made the conversation at table more personal than Tempest desired. He had just been East for his leave, and had stayed with Tempest's people, and he did not forget it.
"They'll never let you come back a bachelor, Tempest," he said. "There's your sister engaged and Lloyd married, and young Stuart thinking about it. You will have to take the plunge some day, you know. Ferrars can tell you that it isn't as bad as it's supposed to be."
"Ferrars had a special inducement." Tempest turned to Mrs. Ferrars with his smiling courtesy. "And also a good deal of conceit. There is no other occasion on which a man needs such a good opinion of himself, is there?"
"Except in the dock. It's marvellous how nerve will carry a fellow through them. Does anyone remember that case of young Claverley"
"We have all forgotten it, Charteris," said Ferrars blandly. "And we are not going to be pilloried for our ignorance. It would be quite as hopeless as discussing the Balkan trouble or the reason why so many men prefer death in an aeroplane to life on the earth."
"Or a year's isolation round the rim of the Pole to city comforts. How long since you have eaten with a silver fork or drunk wine, Tempest?"
"I forget. But I have borne those deprivations with much greater equanimity than I bore the loss of my razor when a breed upset all my dunnage in Pelican Rapids. It's awful how a man accustomed to a smooth face loses
