stood up the other day about you to my aunt, quite solemnly, with, ’Let her alone, my lady.  She’s not the first whom love has made a fool of, and she won’t be the last:  and I believe that some of the moves which look most foolish, turn out best after all.  Live and let live; everybody knows his own business best; anything is better than marriage without real affection.’  Conceive my astonishment at hearing the dear little fellow turn sage in that way!

“By the way, I have had to quote his own advice against him; for I have refused Lord Chalkclere after all.  I told him (C. not S.) that he was much too good for me:  far too perfect and complete a person; that I preferred a husband whom I could break in for myself, even though he gave me a little trouble.  Scoutbush was cross at first; but he said afterwards that it was just like Baby Blake (the wretch always calls me Baby Blake now, after that dreadful girl in Lever’s Novel); and I told him frankly that it was, if he meant that I had sooner break in a thorough-bred for myself, even though I had a fall or two in the process, than jog along on the most finished little pony on earth, who would never go out of an amble.  Lord Chalk may be very finished, and learned, and excellent, and so forth:  but, ma chere, I want, not a white rabbit (of which he always reminds me), but a hero, even though he be a naughty one.  I always fancy people must be very little if they can be finished off so rapidly; if there was any real verve in them, they would take somewhat longer to grow.  Lord Chalk would do very well to bind in Russian leather, and put on one’s library shelves, to be consulted when one forgot a date; but really even your Ulysses of a doctor—­provided, of course, he turned out a prince in disguise, and don’t leave out his h’s—­would be more to the taste of your naughtiest of sisters.”

CHAPTER XII.

A PEER IN TROUBLE.

Somewhere in those days, so it seems, did Mr. Bowie call unto himself a cab at the barrack-gate, and, dressed in his best array, repair to the wilds of Brompton, and request to see either Claude or Mrs. Mellot.

Bowie is an ex-Scots-Fusilier, who, damaged by the kick of a horse, has acted as valet, first to Scoutbush’s father, and next to Scoutbush himself.  He is of a patronising habit of mind, as befits a tolerably “leeterary” Scotsman of forty-five years of age and six-feet three in height, who has full confidence in the integrity of his own virtue, the infallibility of his own opinion, and the strength of his own right arm; for Bowie, though he has a rib or two “dinged in,” is mighty still as Theseus’ self; and both astonished his red-bearded compatriots, and won money for his master, by his prowess in the late feat of arms at Holland House.

Mr. Bowie is asked to walk into Sabina’s boudoir (for Claude is out in the garden), to sit down, and deliver his message:  which he does after a due military salute, sitting bolt upright in his chair, and in a solemn and sonorous voice.