its customary sting:

Of course, the gallant Colonel of the Household Troops could
not do less. That distinguished corps is immaculate; and no
breath of wind must come between it and its propriety. There
is but one black sheep in the 2nd Life Guards, and that, in
the eyes of the coal black colonel (him of the collieries),
is the soft, enchanted, and enchained Mr. Heald. Poor Heald!
Indignant Londonderry! How subservient, in truth, must be
the lean subaltern to his fat colonel.

A Sunday organ followed suit. "What," it demanded, "may be the precise
article of the military code against which Mr. Heald is thought to
have offended? One could scarcely have supposed that officers in Her
Majesty's service were living under such a despotism that they should
be compelled to solicit permission to get married, or their colonel's
approbation of their choice."

In addition to thus disapproving of marriages between his officers and
ladies of the stage, Lord Londonderry (a veteran of fifty-five years'
service) disapproved with equal vigour of tobacco. "What," he once
wrote to Lord Combermere, "are the Gold Sticks to do with that sink of
smoking, the Horse Guards' guard and mess-rooms? Whenever I have
visited them, I have found them _worse_ than any pot-house, and this
actually opposite the Adjutant-General's and under his Grace's very
nose!"

The example set by Cornet Heald seems to have been catching. "Another
young officer of this regiment," announced the _Globe_, "has just run
off with a frail lady belonging to the Theatre and actually married
her at Brighton." He, too, was required to "send in his papers."

Besides losing his commission, Cornet Heald had, in his marriage, all
unwittingly laid up a peck of fresh trouble for himself. This was
brought to a head by the action of his spinster aunt, Miss Susannah
Heald, who, until he came of age, had been his guardian. Suspecting
Lola of a "past," she set herself to pry into it. Gathering that her
nephew's inamorata had already been married, she employed enquiry
agents to look into this previous union and discover just how and when
it had been dissolved. They did their work well, and reported that the
divorce decree of seven years earlier had not been made absolute, and
that Lola's first husband, Captain James, was still alive. Armed with
this knowledge, Miss Heald hurried off to the authorities, and, having
"laid an information," had Lola