ord
while I told him, but bent over Marquis, drawing the dog's leash
tighter, so that I might not see his face, and without a sign or a reply
he was out of the barracks, across his mare's back, and rushing away at
a mad gallop, as if he would leave thought, and memory, and the curse of
love for a worthless woman behind him for ever.

His man stood looking at the gun Fairlie had thrown to him with a
puzzled expression.

"Is the Colonel gone mad?" I heard him say to himself. "The devil's in
it, I think. He used to treat his things a little carefuller than this.
As I live, he's been and gone and broke the trigger?"

The devil wasn't in it, but a woman _was_, an individual that causes as
much mischief as any Asmodeus, Belphegor, or Mephistopheles. Some fair
unknown correspondents assured me the other day, in a letter, that my
satire on women was "a monstrous libel." All I can say is, that if it
_be_ a libel, it is like many a one for which one pays the highest, and
which sounds the blackest--a libel that is _true_!

While his rival rode away as recklessly as though he was riding for his
life, the gallant bridegroom--as the _Court Circular_ would have
it--rolled on his way to Fern Wood, while Gower, very amiably occupying
the rumble, smoked, and bore his position philosophically, comforted by
the recollection that Geraldine's French maid was an uncommonly
good-looking, coquettish little person.

They rolled on, and speedily the postilion pulled up, according to
order, before the white five-bar gate, its paint blistering in the hot
summer dawn, and the great fern-leaves and long grass clinging up round
its posts, still damp with the six o'clock dew. Five minutes passed--ten
minutes--a quarter of an hour. Poor Belle got impatient. Twenty
minutes--five-and-twenty--thirty. Belle couldn't stand it. He began to
pace up and down the turf, soiling his boots frightfully with the long
wet grass, and rejecting all Tom's offers of consolation and a
cigar-case.

"Confound it!" cried poor Belle, piteously, "I thought women were always
ready to marry. I know, when I went to turn off Lacquers of the Rifles
at St. George's, his bride had been waiting for him half an hour, and
was in an awful state of mind, and all the other brides as well, for you
know they always marry first the girl that gets there first, and all the
other poor wretches were kept on tenter-hooks too. Lacquers had lost the
ring, and found it in his waistcoat after al