Harry Molyneux turned his face seaward again as he spoke, and drank in the soft breeze eagerly; he could
scarcely help thanking it aloud, as it stole freshly over his frame, and played gently with his hair, and left a
delicate caress on his cheek\u2014the cheek that was now always so pale, save in the one round scarlet spot where,
months ago, Consumption had hung out her flag of \ue000No surrender.\ue001

There is enough in the scene to justify an average amount of enthusiasm. Those steep broken hills in the
background form the frontier fortress of the maritime Alps, the last outwork of which is the rocky spur on
which Molyneux and his companion are lying. Fir woods feather the sky-line; and from among these, here and
there, the tall stone pines stand up alone, like sentinels\ue002steady, upright, and unwearied, though their guard
has not been relieved for centuries. All around, wild myrtle, and heath, and eglantine curl and creep up the
stems of the olives, trying, from the contact of their fresh youth, to infuse new life and sap into the gray,
gnarled old trees, even as a fair Jewish maiden once strove to cherish her war-worn, decrepit king. There are
other flowers too left, though December has begun, enough to give a faint fragrance to the air and gay colors
to the ground. Just below their feet is a narrow strip of dark ribbed sand, and then the tangle of weed, scarcely
stirred by the water, that all along this coast fringes like a beard the languid lip of the Mediterranean Sea.

Molyneux appreciated and admired all this, after his simple fashion, and said so; his companion did not
answer immediately; he only shrugged his shoulders and lifted his eyebrows, as if he could have disputed the
point if it had not been too much trouble. An optimist in nothing, least of all was Royston Keene grateful or
indulgent to the beauties and bounties of inanimate creation.

\ue003Ah well!\ue004 Harry went on, resignedly, \ue005I know it\u2019s useless trying to get a compliment to Nature out of you. I ought to have given you up that night when we showed you the Alps from the terrace at Berne. You had never seen the Jungfrau before, and she had got her prettiest pink evening dress on, poor thing! and all you would say was, \u2018There\ue006s not much the matter with the view.\ue007\ue008

\ue009It was a concession to your wife\ue00as enthusiasm,\ue00b Keene replied; \ue00ca sudden check might have been dangerous
just then, or I should have spoken more bitterly, after being brought out to look at mountains, when I was
dusty and travel-stained, wanting baths, and dinners, and other necessaries of life.\ue00d

The voice was deep-toned and melodious enough that spoke these words, but too slow and deliberate to be
quite a pleasant one, though there was nothing like a drawl in it. One could easily fancy such a voice ironical
or sarcastic, but hardly raised much in anger; in the imperative mood it might be very successful, but it
seemed as if it could never have pleaded or prayed. It matched the speaker\ue00es exterior singularly well. Had you
seen him for the first time\ue00fcouchant, as he was then\ue010you would have had only an impression of great
length and laziness; but as you gazed on, the vast deep chest expanded under your eye; the knotted muscles,
without an ounce of superfluous flesh to dull their outline, developed themselves one by one; so that gradually
you began to realize the extent of his surpassing bodily powers, and wondered that you could have been
deceived even for a moment. The face guarded its secret far more successfully. The features were bold and
sharply cut, bronzed up to the roots of the crisp light-brown beard and hair, except where the upper brow
retained its original fairness\ue011presenting a startling contrast, like a wreath of snow lying late in spring-time
high up on the side of a black fell. You would hardly say that they were devoid of expression, any more than
that a perfectly drilled soldier is incapable of activity; but you got puzzled in making out what their natural
expression was: it was not sternness, far less ferocity\ue012the face was much too impassible for either; and yet its
listlessness could never be mistaken for languor. The thin short lips might be very pitiless when compressed,
very contemptuous and provocative when curling; but the enormous mustache, sweeping over them like a
wave, and ending in a clean stiff upward curve, made even this a matter of mere conjecture. The cold, steady,
dark eyes seldom flashed or glittered; but, when their pupils contracted, there came into them a sort of sullen,
suppressed, inward light, like that of jet or cannel coal. One curious thing about them was, that they never
seemed to care about following you, and yet you felt you could not escape from them. The first hand-gripe,
however, settled the question with most people: few, after experiencing the involuntary pressure, when he did
not in the least mean to be cordial, doubted that there were passions in Royston Keene\ue013difficult perhaps to
rouse, but yet more difficult to appease or subdue.

His profession was evident. Indeed, it must4 be confessed that the dragoon is not easily dissembled. I know a
very meritorious parish-priest, of fair repute too as a preacher, who has striven for years, hard but
unavailingly, to divest himself of the martial air he brought with him out of the K.D.G. He strides down the
village street with a certain swagger and roll, as if the steel scabbard were still trailing at his heel,
acknowledging rustic bows with a slight quick motion of the finger, like troopers\ue014 salutes; on the smooth
shaven face is shadowed forth the outline of a beard, nurtured and trimmed in old days with more than
horticultural science; in the pulpit and reading-desk gown and surplice hang uneasily, like a disguise, on the
erect soldierly figure, and the effect of his ministrations is thereby sadly marred; for apposite text, earnest
exhortation, and grave rebuke flow with a curious inconsistency from the lips of that well-meaning but
unmitigated Plunger.

Royston Keene was no exception to this rule, though he did not like to be told so, and rather ignored the
profession than otherwise. Perhaps he had begun it early enough to have got tired of it; for he had now been
for some time on half-pay, and a brevet-major, after doing good service in the Indian wars, and was not yet
thirty-four. Molyneux had served in the same light cavalry regiment as his subaltern, and there the foundation
was laid of their close alliance. It was not a very fair or well-balanced one, being made up of implicit
obedience, reliance, and reverence on the one side, and a sort of protecting condescension on the other\ue015much
like the old Roman relation between Client and Patron; nevertheless it had outlasted many more sympathetic
and better-looking friendships.

They used to say of \ue016The Cool Captain” (so he was always called off parade), that “he could
bring a boy to his bearings sooner than any man in the army.” Yet he was a favorite with them all.
There was a regular ovation among those “Godless horsemen” whenever he came into the Club,

or into their mess-rooms; they hung upon his simplest words with a touchingly devout attention, and thought
it was their own stupidity when they could see nothing in them to laugh at or admire; they wrote off all that
they could remember of his sarcasms and repartees—generally strangely travestied and spoiled by
carriage—to unlucky comrades, martyrized on far-off detachments, or vegetating with friends in the
country; the more ambitious, after much private practice, strove to imitate his way of twisting his mustache as
he stood before the fire, though with some, to whom nature had been niggard of hirsute honors, it was
grasping a shadow and fighting with the air.

Certainly Molyneux never was so happy as in that society. Fond as he was of his pretty wife, her influence
was as nothing in the scale. She complained of this, half in earnest, soon after they were married. The fever of
post-nuptial felicity was strong upon Harry just then, but he did not attempt to deny the imputation. He only
said, “My pet, I have known him so much the longest!” I wonder, now, how many brides would
have admitted that somewhat unsatisfactory and illogical excuse? Fanny Molyneux did; she was the
best-natured little woman alive, and wise, too, in her generation, for she never brought matters to a crisis, or
measured her strength against the “heavy-weight.”

Indeed, they got on together extremely well. Whenever Keene happened to be with them—which was
not often—she gave up the management of Harry’s Foreign Affairs to him, reserving to herself
the control of the Home Department, and, between the two, they ruled their vassal right royally. After some
months’ acquaintance they became the greatest friends; on Royston’s side it was one of the
few quite pure and unselfish feelings he had ever cherished toward one of her sex not nearly akin to him in
blood. He always seemed to look on her as a very nice, but rather spoiled child, to be humored and petted to
any amount, but very seldom to be reasoned with or gravely consulted. Considering her numerous
fascinations, and the little practice he had had in the paternal or fraternal line, he really did it remarkably well:
be it understood, it was only en petite comit\u00e9 that all this went on; in general society his manner was strictly
formal and deferential. It provoked her though, sometimes, and one day she ventured to say, “I wish
you would learn to treat me like a grown-up woman!” Royston’s eyes darkened strangely; and
one glance flashed out of the gloom that made her shrink away from him then, and blush painfully when she
thought of it afterward alone. He was frowning, too, as he answered, in a voice unusually harsh and
constrained, “It seems to me we go on very well as it is. But women neverwill leave well
alone.” She did not like to analyze his answer or her own feelings too closely, so she tried to persuade
herself it was a very rude speech, and that she ought to be offended at it. There was a coolness between those
two for some days, amounting to distant courtesy. But the dignified style did not suit ma mignonne (as Harry
delighted to call her) at all, and was, indeed, a lamentable failure; it made her look as if she had been trying on
one of her great-grandmother’s short-waisted dresses; so they soon fell back into their old ways, and,
like the model prince and princess, “lived very happily ever afterward.”

Keene had spent some time with the Molyneuxs during the autumn and winter, and had conducted himself so
far with perfect propriety, certainly keeping Harry straighter than he would have gone alone; for he was,
unluckily, of a convivial turn of mind wholly incompatible with delicate health and a frail constitution. Being
a favorite with the world in general, he felt bound, I suppose, to reciprocate, so, albeit strictly enjoined to keep
the earliest hours, he would sit up till dawn if any one encouraged him, and then come home, perfectly sober
perhaps, but staggering from mere weakness. He did not care for deep drinking in the least, but the number of
magnums he had assisted in flooring, when on a regimen of “three glasses of sherry,” would
have made a double row of nails round the coffin of a larger man. Nature, however, being a Dame,
won’t stand being slighted, or having her admonitions disregarded, and the way she asserted herself
on the morrow was retributive in the extreme. Harry was always sovery ill after one of those nights