proof, ending in his complete restoration to favour.

This youth had brought with him from England a letter from his mother,
a widow lady, an old friend of my grandfather, who had some thirty
years before held with her a juvenile flirtation. It recommended to
his protection her son Frank, about to join the regiment as an ensign,
pathetically enlarging on the various excellencies, domestic and
religious, which shone forth conspicuously in the youth's character,
and of the comfort of contemplating and superintending which she was
about to be deprived. In fact, it had led my grandfather to expect a
youth of extreme docility and modesty, requiring a protector rather to
embolden than to restrain him. After in vain attempting to espy in his
young acquaintance any of the characteristics ascribed to him in his
mother's letter, the Major, naturally good-natured and accessible to
his youthful comrades, very soon suffered himself to be influenced by
the good-humour, vigorous vitality, and careless cleverness of the
Ensign, to an extent that caused him sometimes to wonder secretly at
his own transformation. His retired habits were broken in upon, one
after the other, till he had scarcely a secluded hour in his sixteen
waking ones to enjoy alone his book and his pipe. His peaceful
quarters, silent in general as a monk's cell, would now be invaded at
all sorts of hours by the jovial Garry, followed by the admiring
satellites who usually revolved around him; and the Major, with a
sound between a groan and a chuckle, would close his well-beloved
volume to listen to the facetious details of, and sometimes to
participate in, the uncongenial freaks of the humorous subaltern. Once
he had actually consented, at about the hour he usually went to bed,
to accompany the youth to a Carnival ball--one of a series of
entertainments at which the Catholic youth of the city are wont to
indemnify themselves for the mortifications of Lent, and where masks,
dominoes, and fancy dresses lend their aid to defeat the vigilance of
the lynx-eyed duennas and mammas who look anxiously on, perfectly
aware, in general, that their own watchfulness is more to be relied on
for nipping in the bud an indiscreet amour, than any innate iciness of
temperament or austere propriety in the objects of their care. Not
only did the Major mingle in the scene, but he actually, about
midnight, found himself figuring in a cotillon with a well-developed
senorita of thirteen years,