he Sir
Oracle of some public-house whose hostess he delighted to honour, he
would disappear through a side door just as the constables burst in
at the back, and show himself as remorseless, in his next morning's
sentence of the captured, as if he had never entered a tap-room in all
his life. His superiors called this "zeal"; his inferiors "treachery".
For himself, he laughed. "Everything is fair to those wretches," he was
accustomed to say.

As the time for his marriage approached, however, he had in a measure
given up these exploits, and strove, by his demeanour, to make his
acquaintances forget several remarkable scandals concerning his
private life, for the promulgation of which he once cared little. When
Commandant at the Maria Island, and for the first two years after his
return from the unlucky expedition to Macquarie Harbour, he had not
suffered any fear of society's opinion to restrain his vices, but,
as the affection for the pure young girl, who looked upon him as her
saviour from a dreadful death, increased in honest strength, he had
resolved to shut up those dark pages in his colonial experience, and to
read therein no more. He was not remorseful, he was not even disgusted.
He merely came to the conclusion that, when a man married, he was to
consider certain extravagances common to all bachelors as at an end.
He had "had his fling, like all young men", perhaps he had been foolish
like most young men, but no reproachful ghost of past misdeeds haunted
him. His nature was too prosaic to admit the existence of such phantoms.
Sylvia, in her purity and excellence, was so far above him, that in
raising his eyes to her, he lost sight of all the sordid creatures to
whose level he had once debased himself, and had come in part to regard
the sins he had committed, before his redemption by the love of this
bright young creature, as evil done by him under a past condition of
existence, and for the consequences of which he was not responsible. One
of the consequences, however, was very close to him at this moment. His
convict servant had, according to his instructions, sat up for him, and
as he entered, the man handed him a letter, bearing a superscription in
a female hand.

"Who brought this?" asked Frere, hastily tearing it open to read.
"The groom, sir. He said that there was a gentleman at the 'George the
Fourth' who wished to see you."

Frere smiled, in admiration of the intelligence which had dictated such
a mess