In addition to the other disguise, _aliases_ were of course assumed. The
prince went by the name of Blackstock, Greystock was my Lord Surrey, and
Thinstock Richard Brinsley Sheridan. The treatment of women by the
police is traditional. The 'unfortunate'--unhappy creatures!--are their
pet aversion; and once in their clutches, receive no mercy. The
'Charley' of old was quite as brutal as the modern Hercules of the
glazed hat, and the three adventurers showed an amount of zeal worthy of
a nobler cause, in rescuing the drunken Lais from his grasp. On one
occasion they seem to have hit on a 'deserving case;' a slight skirmish
with the watch ended in a rescue, and the erring creature was taken off
to a house of respectability sufficient to protect her. Here she told
her tale, which, however improbable, turned out to be true. It was a
very old, a very simple one--the common history of many a frail, foolish
girl, cursed with beauty, and the prey of a practised seducer. The main
peculiarity lay in the fact of her respectable birth, and his position,
she being the daughter of a solicitor, he the son of a nobleman.
Marriage was promised, of course, as it has been promised a million
times with the same intent, and for the millionth time was not
performed. The seducer took her from her home, kept her quiet for a
time, and when the novelty was gone, abandoned her. The old story went
on; poverty--a child--a mother's love struggling with a sense of
shame--a visit to her father's house at the last moment, as a forlorn
hope. There she had crawled on her knees to one of those relentless
parents on whose heads lie the utter loss of their children's souls. The
false pride, that spoke of the blot on his name, the disgrace of his
house--when a Saviour's example should have bid him forgive and raise
the penitent in her misery from the dust--whispered him to turn her from
his door. He ordered the footman to put her out. The man, a nobleman in
plush, moved by his young mistress's utter misery, would not obey though