He had few male friends.  He shunned the Clubs as nests of scandal.  The cards he contemplated were mostly those of the sex, with the husband, if there was a husband, evidently dragged in for propriety’s sake.  He perused the cards and smiled.  He knew their purpose.  What terrible light Thompson and Bairam had thrown on some of them!  Heavens! in what a state was the blood of this Empire.

Before commencing his campaign he called on two ancient intimates, Lord Heddon, and his distant cousin Darley Absworthy, both Members of Parliament, useful men, though gouty, who had sown in their time a fine crop of wild oats, and advocated the advantage of doing so, seeing that they did not fancy themselves the worse for it.  He found one with an imbecile son and the other with consumptive daughters.  “So much,” he wrote in the Note-book, “for the Wild Oats theory!”

Darley was proud of his daughters’ white and pink skins.  “Beautiful complexions,” he called them.  The eldest was in the market, immensely admired.  Sir Austin was introduced to her.  She talked fluently and sweetly.  A youth not on his guard, a simple school-boy youth, or even a man, might have fallen in love with her, she was so affable and fair.  There was something poetic about her.  And she was quite well, she said, the baronet frequently questioning her on that point.  She intimated that she was robust; but towards the close of their conversation her hand would now and then travel to her side, and she breathed painfully an instant, saying, “Isn’t it odd?  Dora, Adela, and myself, we all feel the same queer sensation—­about the heart, I think it is—­after talking much.”

Sir Austin nodded and blinked sadly, exclaiming to his soul, “Wild oats! wild oats!”

He did not ask permission to see Dora and Adela.

Lord Heddon vehemently preached wild oats.

“It’s all nonsense, Feverel,” he said, “about bringing up a lad out of the common way.  He’s all the better for a little racketing when he’s green—­feels his bone and muscle learns to know the world.  He’ll never be a man if he hasn’t played at the old game one time in his life, and the earlier the better.  I’ve always found the best fellows were wildish once.  I don’t care what he does when he’s a green-horn; besides, he’s got an excuse for it then.  You can’t expect to have a man, if he doesn’t take a man’s food.  You’ll have a milksop.  And, depend upon it, when he does break out he’ll go to the devil, and nobody pities him.  Look what those fellows the grocers, do when they get hold of a young—­what d’ye call ’em?—­apprentice.  They know the scoundrel was born with a sweet tooth.  Well! they give him the run of the shop, and in a very short time he soberly deals out the goods, a devilish deal too wise to abstract a morsel even for the pleasure of stealing.  I know you have contrary theories.  You hold that the young grocer should have a soul above sugar.  It won’t do!  Take my word for it, Feverel, it’s a dangerous experiment, that of bringing up flesh and blood in harness.  No colt will bear it, or he’s a tame beast.  And look you:  take it on medical grounds.  Early excesses the frame will recover from:  late ones break the constitution.  There’s the case in a nutshell.  How’s your son?”