needs exist, wherever fathers neglect their daughters, husbands their wives; wherever the average of the women cannot respect the average of the men.  But the experience of centuries should likewise have taught men, that the said father-confessors are no objects of envy; that their temptations to become spiritual coxcombs (the worst species of all coxcombs), if not intriguers, bullies, and worse, are so extreme, that the soul which is proof against them must be either very great, or very small indeed.  Whether Campbell was altogether proof, will be seen hereafter.  But one day Elsley found out that such was Campbell’s influence, and did not love him the more for the discovery.

They were walking round the garden after dinner; Scoutbush was licking his foolish lips over some commonplace tale of scandal.

“I tell you, my dear fellow, she’s booked; and Mellot knows it as well as I. He saw her that night at Lady A’s.”

“We saw the third act of the comi-tragedy.  The fourth is playing out now.  We shall see the fifth before the winter.”

“Non sine sanguine!” said the Major.

“Serve the wretched stick right, at least,” said Scoutbush.  “What right had he to marry such a pretty woman?”

“What right had they to marry her up to him?” said Claude.  “I don’t blame poor January.  I suppose none of us, gentlemen, would have refused such a pretty toy, if we could have afforded it as he could.”

“Whom do you blame then?” asked Elsley.

“Fathers and mothers who prate hypocritically about keeping their daughters’ minds pure; and then abuse a girl’s ignorance, in order to sell her to ruin.  Let them keep her mind pure, in heaven’s name; but let them consider themselves all the more bound in honour to use on her behalf the experience in which she must not share.”

“Well,” drawled Scoutbush, “I don’t complain of her bolting; she’s a very sweet creature, and always was:  but, as Longreach says,—­and a very witty fellow he is, though you laugh at him,—­’If she’d kept to us, I shouldn’t have minded:  but as Guardsmen, we must throw her over.  It’s an insult to the whole Guards, my dear fellow, after refusing two of us, to marry an attorney, and after all to bolt with a plunger.’”

What bolting with a plunger might signify, Elsley knew not:  but ere he could ask, the Major rejoined, in an abstracted voice—­

“God help us all!  And this is the girl I recollect, two years ago, singing there in Cavendish Square, as innocent as a nestling thrush!”

“Poor child!” said Mellot, “sold at first—­perhaps sold again now.  The plunger has bills out, and she has ready money.  I know her settlements.”

“She shan’t do it,” said the Major quietly:  “I’ll write to her to-night.”

Elsley looked at him keenly.  “You think, then, sir, that you can, by simply writing, stop this intrigue?”

The Major did not answer.  He was deep in thought.