daughter!" he said. "I met them the other day, somewhere about here. He
introduced me to her. A pretty little baggage.

"No." Adrian set him right. "'Tis a Miss Desborough, a Roman Catholic
dairymaid. Reminds one of pastoral England in the time of the
Plantagenets! He's quite equal to introducing her as Thompson's
daughter, and himself as Beelzebub's son. However, the wild animal is in
Hymen's chains, and the cake is cut. Will you have your morsel?"

"Oh, by all means!--not now." Algernon had an unwonted air of
reflection.--" Father know it?"

"Not yet. He will to-night by nine o'clock."

"Then I must see him by seven. Don't say you met me." He nodded, and
pricked his horse.

"Wants money!" said Adrian, putting the combustible he carried once more
in motion.

The women were the crowning joy of his contemplative mind. He had
reserved them for his final discharge. Dear demonstrative creatures!
Dyspepsia would not weaken their poignant outcries, or self-interest
check their fainting fits. On the generic woman one could calculate.
Well might The Pilgrim's Scrip say of her that, "She is always at
Nature's breast"; not intending it as a compliment. Each woman is Eve
throughout the ages; whereas the Pilgrim would have us believe that the
Adam in men has become warier, if not wiser; and weak as he is, has
learnt a lesson from time. Probably the Pilgrim's meaning may be taken
to be, that Man grows, and Woman does not.