Thus were the affairs of Mr and Mrs Frank Chobham left in a state of complete entanglement. In the course of the next chapter I shall have to describe the action of Mr Chobham with regard to the complications that had arisen. First, however, I must relate how I myself was brought into direct connection therewith.

CHAPTER VII.

As soon as I had discovered that White was serving under an assumed name in my own regiment, I made some inquiries respecting him. From the officers I learnt that he was considered a useless soldier, but a good-natured, ingenious servant. His troop sergeant-major told me that Blacker was regarded by his comrades as a "dry" —that is, a humorous-man, who could sing capital songs; and that the worst he—the sergeant-major-could allege against him was, that he was rather given to malingering. I was much puzzled, and applied to my father for advice.

My father, as soon as he had heard that his old favourite was a soldier in the regiment, wrote offering to buy him his discharge, and to take him into his own service again. But White declined the offer; and did So, it seemed to me, without any particular gratitude, but with a certain sulkiness which I could not comprehend. By degrees, however, I grew accustomed to having him about me; I learnt to call him by his assumed name; and I ceased to trouble myself about his mystery, whatever it was, as to which he, for his part, never seemed willing to make any further com

munication.

Soon after the White incident, I went to London, by Colonel Rush's desire, in order to attend a sale of horses-especially of some which belonged to an officer just ordered abroad. I was accompanied by Mr Joiner,

our veterinary surgeon, who came in the joint capacity of a friend and a professional adviser. He it was whose acquaintance I had made on going to Aldershot for the first time. Since then he had never again referred to his bay horse, "whom a young fellow could go through the school and get dismissed on; " and it was not until a year later that he told me the confidential horse had been sold to a foreign baron, who had not paid for him.

When Mr Joiner and I attended the sale in London, we found that a number of horses belonging to Ellis Garbold, Esq., were to be included in the auction. Therefore I was not unprepared to meet Garbold himself, which I presently did. After earnestly warning me not to buy any of his own horses-" for," said he, "they are none of them any use," he told me that he was

about to visit Mr Frank Chobham, who lived, he believed, somewhere in my part of the country.

On hearing this, I told him that Mrs Chobham was a very old friend of mine. "What!" said Garbold; "Chobham isn't married, is he?"

"Indeed he is," answered I.

"What an extraordinary fellow, never to have told me !" remarked Mr Garbold.1

He then asked, "What is Mrs C. like?" "Why," answered I, "she's very nice and jolly indeed; but what do you think of him?"

"I don't know, really," replied Mr Garbold. "He amuses me rather, and that's all I ever care about.”

"You can't help liking Mrs Chobham,"

1 I may remind the reader that this conversation took place before the events narrated in the preceding chapter.