behalf the experience in which she must not share."

"Well," drawled Scoutbush, "I don't complain of her bolting; she's a
very sweet creature, and always was: but, as Longreach says,--and a very
witty fellow he is, though you laugh at him,--'If she'd kept to us, I
shouldn't have minded: but as Guardsmen, we must throw her over. It's an
insult to the whole Guards, my dear fellow, after refusing two of us, to
marry an attorney, and after all to bolt with a plunger.'"

What bolting with a plunger might signify, Elsley knew not: but ere he
could ask, the Major rejoined, in an abstracted voice--

"God help us all! And this is the girl I recollect, two years ago,
singing there in Cavendish Square, as innocent as a nestling thrush!"

"Poor child!" said Mellot, "sold at first--perhaps sold again now. The
plunger has bills out, and she has ready money. I know her settlements."

"She shan't do it," said the Major quietly: "I'll write to her
to-night."

Elsley looked at him keenly. "You think, then, sir, that you can, by
simply writing, stop this intrigue?"

The Major did not answer. He was deep in thought.

"I shouldn't wonder if he did," said Scoutbush; "two to one on his
baulking the plunger!"

"She is at Lord ----'s now, at those silly private theatricals. Is he