Also she understood him.  “What you want, my dear Dick, is something to do.  You went and got married like a—­hum!—­friends must be respectful.  Go into the Army.  Try the turf.  I can put you up to a trick or two—­ friends should make themselves useful.”

She told him what she liked in him.  “You’re the only man I was ever alone with who don’t talk to me of love and make me feel sick.  I hate men who can’t speak to a woman sensibly.—­Just wait a minute.”  She left him and presently returned with, “Ah, Dick! old fellow! how are you?”—­ arrayed like a cavalier, one arm stuck in her side, her hat jauntily cocked, and a pretty oath on her lips to give reality to the costume.  “What do you think of me?  Wasn’t it a shame to make a woman of me when I was born to be a man?”

“I don’t know that,” said Richard, for the contrast in her attire to those shooting eyes and lips, aired her sex bewitchingly.

“What! you think I don’t do it well?”

“Charming! but I can’t forget...”

“Now that is too bad!” she pouted.

Then she proposed that they should go out into the midnight streets arm-in-arm, and out they went and had great fits of laughter at her impertinent manner of using her eyeglass, and outrageous affectation of the supreme dandy.

“They take up men, Dick, for going about in women’s clothes, and vice versaw, I suppose.  You’ll bail me, old fellaa, if I have to make my bow to the beak, won’t you?  Say it’s becas I’m an honest woman and don’t care to hide the—­a—­unmentionables when I wear them—­as the t’others do,” sprinkled with the dandy’s famous invocations.

He began to conceive romance in that sort of fun.

“You’re a wopper, my brave Dick! won’t let any peeler take me? by Jove!”

And he with many assurances guaranteed to stand by her, while she bent her thin fingers trying the muscle of his arm; and reposed upon it more.  There was delicacy in her dandyism.  She was a graceful cavalier.

“Sir Julius,” as they named the dandy’s attire, was frequently called for on his evening visits to Mrs. Mount.  When he beheld Sir Julius he thought of the lady, and “vice versaw,” as Sir Julius was fond of exclaiming.

Was ever hero in this fashion wooed?

The woman now and then would peep through Sir Julius.  Or she would sit, and talk, and altogether forget she was impersonating that worthy fop.

She never uttered an idea or a reflection, but Richard thought her the cleverest woman he had ever met.

All kinds of problematic notions beset him.  She was cold as ice, she hated talk about love, and she was branded by the world.

A rumour spread that reached Mrs. Doria’s ears.  She rushed to Adrian first.  The wise youth believed there was nothing in it.  She sailed down upon Richard.  “Is this true? that you have been seen going publicly about with an infamous woman, Richard?  Tell me! pray, relieve me!”