He varied the dull routine of seducers, it is true, for he never wearied
of, or behaved unkindly to, the woman he had ruined. Time brought many
troubles on them, but never satiety or coldness. To the very last he
worshiped her, and, to the utmost of his power, guarded her tenderly.
Rough, and hard, and morose as he was to others, she never heard his
lips utter one harsh word.

But she was of a proud, sensitive spirit, and had miscalculated her
strength when she thought she could bear dishonor. After that duel with
which Austria rang, in which the best _schlager_ in his brigade fell,
horribly mangled, the day after he had whispered a jest about Caroline
Mannering, men were very cautious how they even looked askance at her;
but the women--who could bridle their tongues or blunt their scornful
glances? Briareus, armed to the teeth, would not affright our modern
dowagers, or deter them from their prey. Wherever the carcass of a fair
fame lies, thither they flock, screaming shrilly in triumph,
vulture-eyed, sharp-taloned--the choosers of the slain.

I pity from my heart the frailest, the most utterly fallen of her sex,
when once the social Nemesis hands her over to the chorus of the
Eumenides.

We deride the _subsignanæ_ who line the wall; we make a mock at their
old-fashioned whist; we risk jokes whereat our partners smile
approvingly on their false fronts and wonderful head-gears; but may the
wittiest of us never know by experience how much worse is the bite than
the bark of the Veteran Battalion!

Caroline Mannering had all this to contend with, for Vienna was a
favorite resort in those days for the English, and she was constantly