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“Why, you are as bad as the girls at Bombay. One of them told me they all perfectly doated on dear Major Keeling; he was just like a dear delightful bandit in an opera.”

“Really, Elma!” Penelope’s graceful head was lifted with dignity, and Lady Haigh, foreseeing a coolness, hastened to make amends.

“I was only in fun. We don’t doat, do we, Pen? or gush, or anything of that sort. But it was only the happiest chance his letting you come with us. If he had caught you singing Tennyson, or your dear Miss Barrett—Mrs Browning, is it? what does it signify?—there would have been no hope for you. But it happened to be Scott, and that conquered him at once. They say he knows all the poems by heart, and recites them before a battle. Dugald heard him doing it at Umarganj, at any rate. The troopers like it, because they think he is muttering spells to discomfit the enemy. Isn’t it romantic?”

“How funny!” was Penelope’s disappointing comment.

“He was very fond of Byron once, but he has given him up for conscience’ sake,” pursued Lady Haigh.