Then turning to Harold she
began to apologise to him.
"I don't know what sort of dinner you will get, Colonel Quaritch," she
said; "it is so provoking of my father; he never gives one the least
warning when he is going to ask any one to dinner."
"Not at all--not at all," he answered hurriedly. "It is I who ought to
apologise, coming down on you like--like----"
"A wolf on the fold," suggested Ida.
"Yes, exactly," he went on earnestly, looking at his coat, "but not in
purple and gold."
"Well," she went on laughing, "you will get very little to eat for
your pains, and I know that soldiers always like good dinners."
"How do you know that, Miss de la Molle?"
"Oh, because of poor James and his friends whom he used to bring here.
By the way, Colonel Quaritch," she went on with a sudden softening of
the voice, "you have been in Egypt, I know, because I have so often
seen your name in the papers; did you ever meet my brother there?"
"I knew him slightly," he answered. "Only very slightly. I did not
know that he was your brother, or indeed that you had a brother. He
was a dashing officer."
What he did not say, however, was that he also knew him to have been
one of the wildest and most extravagant young men in an extravagant
regiment, and as such had to some extent shunned his society on the
few occasions that he had been thrown in with him.
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