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She was humbugging her husband, not me. Fool that I was, I could not mind my own business." So Mrs. Costobell was not flirting with the man who suffered on her account. It is a regrettable but true statement that Iris would willingly have hugged Mrs. Costobell at that moment.
I had the good fortune to serve under an old friend, Colonel Costobell; but some malign star sent Lord Ventnor to the Far East, this time in an important civil capacity. I met him occasionally, and we found we did not like each other any better. My horse beat his for the Pagoda Hurdle Handicap poor old Sultan! I wonder where he is now." "Was your horse called 'Sultan'?" "Yes.
Costobell said that, for his wife's sake, he would have kept the wretched thing secret, but he was compelled to clear Anstruther's name, especially as he came across the other old Johnnie " "Pompey, you are incoherent with excitement. Who is 'the other old Johnnie'?" asked the first luff severely. "Didn't I tell you?
Am I the first man to be offered up as a sacrifice on the altar of official expediency?" "But you are powerless now. You can hardly hope to have your case revised. What chance is there that your name will ever be cleared?" "Mrs. Costobell can do it if she will. The vagaries of such a woman are not to be depended on. If Lord Ventnor has cast her off, her hatred may 'prove stronger than her passion.
Robert Anstruther, late captain of Bengal Cavalry, rose to his feet. He preferred to take his punishment standing. "The court-martial agreed with her, Miss Deane, and I am a prejudiced witness," he replied. "Who was the lady?" "The wife of my colonel, Mrs. Costobell." "Oh!" Long afterwards he remembered the agony of that moment, and winced even at the remembrance.
But I have had my reward. If ever I meet Mrs. Costobell again I will thank her for a great service." Iris suddenly became confused. Her brow and neck tingled with a quick access of color. "Why do you say that?" she asked; and Jenks, who was rising, either did not hear, or pretended not to hear, the tremor in her tone.
That distinguished nobleman was vastly surprised to learn how Anstruther had cut the ground from beneath his feet. "Yes," he said, in reply to the sailor's request for information, "I know all about it. It could not well be otherwise, seeing that next to Mrs. Costobell I was the principal witness against him." "That must have been d d awkward for you," was the unexpected comment. "Indeed! Why?"
Costobell if her husband died, or, in any event, to bring about a divorce when the Hong Kong affair had blown over. Then she learnt that he was after Miss Iris, and there is no doubt her fury helped on the fever.
Costobell and he deliberately concocted a plot to ruin me he, for the sake of his old animosity you remember that I had also crossed his path in Egypt she, because she feared I would speak to her husband. On pretence of seeking my advice, she inveigled me at night into a deserted corner of the Club grounds at Hong Kong.
"We had just landed," he said, "and some of the crew were pushing the coolies out of the way, when two men jumped down the steps, and a most fiendish row sprang up. That is, there was no dispute or wrangling, but one chap, who, it turned out, was Colonel Costobell, grabbed Ventnor by the shirt front, and threatened to smash his face in if he didn't listen then and there to what he had to say.
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