ke a fool of the old
gentleman in the widest sense of the word, he naturally swore very
heartily, and anything but relished the idea. Hamilton Telfer, senior,
had certainly been a good deal with Violet that season, and Violet, a
girl poor as a rat and beautiful as Semele, talked to him, and sang to
him, and rode with him more than she did with any of us; so people
talked and talked, and said the old member would get caught, and the
Major, when he heard it, waxed fiercely wroth at the folly his parent
had fallen into while he'd been off the scene down at Dover with his
troop, but, like a wise man, said nothing, knowing, both by experience
and observation, that opposition in such affairs is like a patent Vesta
among hayricks. Telfer was a particular chum of mine: we'd lounged about
town, and shot on the moors, and campaigned in India together, and I
don't believe there was a better soldier, a cooler head, a quicker eye,
or a steadier hand in the service than he was. He was six-and-thirty
now, and had seen life pretty well, I can tell you, for there was not a
get-at-able corner of the globe that he hadn't looked at through his
eye-glass. Tall and muscular, with a stern, handsome face, with the
prospect of Torwood (where there's some of the best shooting in England,
I give you my word), and 15,000_l._ a year, Telfer was a great card in
the matrimonial line, but hadn't let himself be played as yet, for the
petty trickery the women used in trying to get him dealt to them
disgusted him, and small wonder. Men liked him cordially, women thought
him cold and sarcastic; and he was much more genial, I admit, at mess,
or at lansquenet, or in the smoking-room of the U. S., than he was in
boudoirs and ball-rooms, as the mere knowledge that mammas and their
darlings were trying to hook him made him get on his stilts at once.

"I don't feel easy in my mind about the governor," said he, as we drove
along to the South-Eastern Station a few days after on our way to
Essellau. "As I was bidding him good-bye this morning, Soames brought
him a letter in a woman's hand. Heaven knows he may have a score of fair
correspondents for anything I care, but if I thought it was the
Tressillian, devil take her----"

"And the devil won't have had a prettier prize since Proserpine was
stolen," said I.

"No, confound it, I saw she was handsome enough," swore the Major,
disgusted; "and a pretty face always did make a fool of my father,
according to his ow