ble.

He had few male friends. He shunned the Clubs as nests of scandal. The
cards he contemplated were mostly those of the sex, with the husband,
if there was a husband, evidently dragged in for propriety's sake. He
perused the cards and smiled. He knew their purpose. What terrible light
Thompson and Bairam had thrown on some of them! Heavens! in what a state
was the blood of this Empire.

Before commencing his campaign he called on two ancient intimates,
Lord Heddon, and his distant cousin Darley Absworthy, both Members of
Parliament, useful men, though gouty, who had sown in their time a fine
crop of wild oats, and advocated the advantage of doing so, seeing that
they did not fancy themselves the worse for it. He found one with an
imbecile son and the other with consumptive daughters. "So much," he
wrote in the Note-book, "for the Wild Oats theory!"

Darley was proud of his daughters' white and pink skins. "Beautiful
complexions," he called them. The eldest was in the market, immensely
admired. Sir Austin was introduced to her. She talked fluently and
sweetly. A youth not on his guard, a simple school-boy youth, or even
a man, might have fallen in love with her, she was so affable and fair.
There was something poetic about her. And she was quite well, she said,
the baronet frequently questioning her on that point. She intimated that
she was robust; but towards the close of their conversation her hand
would now and then travel to her side, and she breathed painfully an
instant, saying, "Isn't it odd? Dora, Adela, and myself, we all feel
the same queer sensation--about the heart, I think it is--after talking
much."

Sir Austin nodded and blinked sadly, exclaiming to his soul, "Wild oats!
wild oats!"

He did not ask permission to see Dora and Adela.

Lord Heddon vehemently preached wild oats.

"It's all nonsense, Feverel," he said, "about bringing up a lad out of
the common way. He's all the better for a little racketing when he's
green--feels his bone and muscle learns to know the world. He'll never
be a man if he hasn't played at the old game one time in his life, and
the earlier the better. I've always found the best fellows were wildish
once. I don't care what he does when he's a green-horn; besides, he's
got an excuse for it then. You can't expect to have a man, if he doesn't
take a man's food. You'll have a milksop. And, depend upon it, when he
does break out he'll go to the devil, and nobody pities him. L