d he's got a lachrymose, stout,
old party. But how beautiful she used to be! My word, how beautiful she
used to be! To go to see her now is better than any sermon; it is an
admirable moral exercise."

To Lady Rawlins also the Colonel's visits proved excellent moral
exercises tinged with chastenings. Whenever he went away he left behind
him some aphorism or reflection filled with a wholesome bitter. But
still she sought his society and, in secret, adored him.

In addition to the club and Lady Rawlins there were the tables at Monte
Carlo, with their motley company, which to a man of the world could not
fail to be amusing. Besides, the Colonel had one weakness--sometimes he
did a little gambling, and when he played he liked to play fairly
high. Morris accompanied him once to the "Salles de jeu," and--that was
enough. What passed there exactly, could never be got out of him, even
by Mary, whose sense of humour was more than satisfied with the little
comedies in progress about her, no single point of which did she ever
miss.

Only, funny as she might be in her general feebleness, and badly as
she might have behaved in some distant past, for Lady Rawlins she felt
sorry. Her kind heart told Mary that this unhappy person also possessed
a heart, although she was now stout and on the wrong side of middle age.
She was aware, too, that the Colonel knew as much, and his scientific
pin-pricks and searings of that guileless and unprotected organ struck
her as little short of cruel. None the less so, indeed, because the
victim at the stake imagined that they were inflicted in kindness by the
hand of a still tender and devoted friend.

"I hope that I shan't quarrel with my father-in-law," reflected Mary
to herself, after one of the best of these exhibitions; "he's got an
uncommonly long memory, and likes to come even. However, I never shall,
because he's afraid of me and knows that I see through him."

Mary was right. A very sincere respect for her martial powers when
roused ensured perfect peace between her and the Colonel. With his
son, however, it was otherwise. Even in this age of the Triumph of the
Offspring parents do exist who take advantage of their sons' strict
observance of the Fifth Commandment. It is easy to turn a man into a
moral bolster and sit upon him if you know that an exaggerated sense of
filial duty will prevent him from stuffing himself with pins. So it came
about that Morris was sometimes sat upon, especially