“Well, I don’t like women to smoke,” said plain Ripton.

“Why mayn’t they do what men do?” the hero cried impetuously.  “I hate that contemptible narrow-mindedness.  It’s that makes the ruin and horrors I see.  Why mayn’t they do what men do?  I like the women who are brave enough not to be hypocrites.  By heaven! if these women are bad, I like them better than a set of hypocritical creatures who are all show, and deceive you in the end.”

“Bravo!” shouted Adrian.  “There speaks the regenerator.”

Ripton, as usual, was crushed by his leader.  He had no argument.  He still thought women ought not to smoke; and he thought of one far away, lonely by the sea, who was perfect without being cosmopolitan.

The Pilgrim’s Scrip remarks that:  “Young men take joy in nothing so much as the thinking women Angels:  and nothing sours men of experience more than knowing that all are not quite so.”

The Aphorist would have pardoned Ripton Thompson his first Random extravagance, had he perceived the simple warm-hearted worship of feminine goodness Richard’s young bride had inspired in the breast of the youth.  It might possibly have taught him to put deeper trust in our nature.

Ripton thought of her, and had a feeling of sadness.  He wandered about the grounds by himself, went through an open postern, and threw himself down among some bushes on the slope of the hill.  Lying there, and meditating, he became aware of voices conversing.

“What does he want?” said a woman’s voice.  “It’s another of his villanies, I know.  Upon my honour, Brayder, when I think of what I have to reproach him for, I think I must go mad, or kill him.”

“Tragic!” said the Hon. Peter.  “Haven’t you revenged yourself, Bella, pretty often?  Best deal openly.  This is a commercial transaction.  You ask for money, and you are to have it—­on the conditions:  double the sum, and debts paid.”

“He applies to me!”

“You know, my dear Bella, it has long been all up between you.  I think Mount has behaved very well, considering all he knows.  He’s not easily hoodwinked, you know.  He resigns himself to his fate and follows other game.”

“Then the condition is, that I am to seduce this young man?”

“My dear Bella! you strike your bird like a hawk.  I didn’t say seduce.  Hold him in—­play with him.  Amuse him.”

“I don’t understand half-measures.”

“Women seldom do.”

“How I hate you, Brayder!”

“I thank your ladyship.”

The two walked farther.  Ripton had heard some little of the colloquy.  He left the spot in a serious mood, apprehensive of something dark to the people he loved, though he had no idea of what the Hon. Peter’s stipulation involved.