“Yet you say it is only out of regard for me you warn me so against her.”

“I repeat it.”

“Then, sir, if, by Heaven’s mercy, you should be mistaken in her character—­if, little as I deserve it, I should succeed in winning her regard—­I might reckon on your permission—­on your kind—­support?”

“Hardly,” said Mr. Bazalgette, hastily.  He then stared at the honest earnest face that was turned toward him.  “Well,” said he, “you modest gentlemen have a marvelous fund of assurance at bottom.  No, sir; with the exception of this piece of friendly advice I shall be strictly neutral.  In return for it, if you should succeed, be so good as to take her out of the house, that is the only stipulation I venture to propose.”

“I should be sure to do that,” cried David, lifting his eyes to Heaven with rapture; “but I shall not have the chance.”

“So I keep telling you.  You might as well hope to tempt a statue of the Goddess Flirtation.  She infinitely prefers wealth and vanity to anything, even to vice.”

“Vice, sir! is that a term for us to apply to a lady like her, whom we are all unworthy to approach?” and David turned very red.

“Well, you need not quarrel with me about her, as I don’t with you."

“Quarrel with you, dear sir?  I hope I feel your kindness, and know my duty better; but, sir, I am agitated, and my heart is troubled; and surely you go beyond reason.  She is not old enough to have had so many lovers.”

“Humph! she has made good use of her time.”

“Even could I believe that she, who seems to me an angel, is a coquette, still she cannot be hard and heartless as you describe her.  It is impossible; it does not belong to her years.”

“You keep harping on her age, Dodd.  Do you know her age?  If you do, you have the advantage of me.  I have not seen her baptismal register.  Have you?”

“No, sir, but I know what she says is her age.”

“That is only evidence of what is not her age.”

“But there is her face, sir; that is evidence.”

“You have never seen her face; it is always got up to deceive the public.”

“I have seen it at the dawn, before any of you were up.”

“What is that?  Halo! the deuce—­where?”

“In the garden.”

“In the garden?  Oh, she does not jump off her down-bed on to a flowerbed.  She had been an hour at work on that face before ever the sun or you got leave to look on it.”

“I’ll stake my head I tell her age within a year, Mr. Bazalgette.”

“No you will not, nor within ten years.”

“That is soon seen.  I call her one-and-twenty.”

“One-and-twenty!  You are mad!  Why, she has had a child that would be fifteen now if it had lived.”

“Miss Lucy?  A child?  Fifteen years?  What on earth do you mean?”

“What do you mean?  What has Miss Lucy to do with it?  You know very well it is MY WIFE I am warning you against, not that innocent girl.”