a contemptuous twist of his
moustaches and a shrug of his shoulders to me. "I must say, if I were a
woman, I shouldn't feel over-flattered by a lover who admired his own
beauty first, and mine afterwards. Not that I pretend to understand
women."

By which speech I argued that his old playmate Geraldine hadn't thrown
hay over the Colonel, and been taught billiards by him, and ridden his
bay mare over the park in her evening dress, without interesting him
slightly; and that--though I don't think he knew it--he was deigning to
be a trifle jealous of his Second Captain, the all-mighty conqueror
Belle.

"What fools they must be that put in these things!" yawned Belle one
morning, reading over his breakfast coffee in the _Daily Pryer_ one of
those "advertisements for a wife" that one comes across sometimes in the
papers, and that make us, like a good many other things, agree with
Goldsmith:

Reason, they say, belongs to man,
But let them prove it if they can;
Wise Aristotle and Smiglicious,
By ratiocinations specious,
Have strove to prove with great precision,
With definition and division,
Homo est ratione praeditum,
But for my soul I cannot credit 'em.

"What fools they must be!" yawned Belle, wrapping his dressing-gown
round him, and coaxing his perfumy whiskers under his velvet
smoking-cap. Belle was always inundated by smoking-caps in cloth and
velvet, silk and beads, with blue tassels, and red tassels, and gold
tassels, embroidered and filigreed, rounded and pointed; he had them
sent to him by the dozen, and pretty good chaff he made of the donors.
"Awful fools! The idea of advertising for a wife, when the only
difficulty a man has is to keep from being tricked into taking one. I
bet you, if I did like this owl here, I should have a hundred answers;
and if it was known it was I----"

"Little Geraldine's self for a candidate, eh?" asked Tom Gower.

"Very possibly," said Belle, with a self-complacent smile. "She's a fast
little thing, don't check at much, and she's deucedly in love with me,
poor little dear--almost as much trouble to me as Julia Sedley was last
season. That girl all but proposed to me; she did, indeed. Never was
nearer coming to grief in my life. What will you bet me that, if I
advertise for a wife, I don't hoax lots of women?"

"I'll bet you ten pounds," said I, "that you don't hoax one!"

"Done!" said Belle, stretching out his hand for a dainty
memorandum-book, gift of the