‘Methusalem has been unco “wastefu’ in wives"!’ said Logan.

’His family have been consulting me—­the women in tears.  He will marry his grandchildren’s German governess, and there is nothing to be done.  In such cases nothing is ever to be done.  You can easily distract an aged man’s volatile affections, and attach them to a new charmer.  But she is just as ineligible as the first; marry he will, always a young woman.  Now if a respectable virgin or widow of, say, fifty, could hand him a love philtre, and gain his heart, appearances would, more or less, be saved.  But, short of philtres, there is nothing to be done.  We turn away a great deal of business of that sort.’

The Society of Disentanglers, then, reluctantly abandoned dealings in this class of affairs.

In another distressing business, Merton, as a patriot, was obliged to abandon an attractive enterprise.  The Marquis of Seakail was serving his country as a volunteer, and had been mentioned in despatches.  But, to the misery of his family, he had entangled himself, before his departure, with a young lady who taught in a high school for girls.  Her character was unimpeachable, her person graceful; still, as her father was a butcher, the duke and duchess were reluctant to assent to the union.  They consulted Merton, and assured him that they would not flinch from expense.  A great idea flashed across Merton’s mind.  He might send out a stalwart band of Disentanglers, who, disguised as the enemy, might capture Seakail, and carry him off prisoner to some retreat where the fairest of his female staff (of course with a suitable chaperon), would await him in the character of a daughter of the hostile race.  The result would probably be to detach Seakail’s heart from his love in England.  But on reflection, Merton felt that the scheme was unworthy of a patriot.

Other painful cases occurred.  One lady, a mother, of resolute character, consulted Merton on the case of her son.  He was betrothed to an excitable girl, a neighbour in the country, who wrote long literary letters about Mr. George Meredith’s novels, and (when abroad) was a perfect Baedeker, or Murray, or Mr. Augustus Hare:  instructing through correspondence.  So the matron complained, but this was not the worst of it.  There was an unhappy family history, of a kind infinitely more common in fiction than in real life.  To be explicit, even according to the ideas of the most abject barbarians, the young people, unwittingly, were too near akin for matrimony.

‘There is nothing for it but to tell both of them the truth,’ said Merton.  ‘This is not a case in which we can be concerned.’

The resolute matron did not take his counsel.  The man was told, not the girl, who died in painful circumstances, still writing.  Her letters were later given to the world, though obviously not intended for publication, and only calculated to waken unavailing grief among the sentimental, and to make the judicious tired.  There was, however, a case in which Merton may be said to have succeeded by a happy accident.  Two visitors, ladies, were ushered into his consulting room; they were announced as Miss Baddeley and Miss Crofton.