, then,' said he, 'get your traps together, and be here within
an hour. I 'll have all in readiness for you.' I did not much fancy
starting off in this fashion, and without my dinner, too; but egad! he's
one of those fellows that don't stand parleying, and so I just took him
at his word, and here I am. I take it the matter must be a very emergent
one, eh?"

"It is clear Sir Horace Upton thought so," said Harcourt, rather amused
than offended by the other's curiosity.

"There's a woman in it, somehow, I 'll be bound, eh?"

Harcourt laughed heartily at this sally, and pushed the decanter towards
his guest.

"Not that I'd give sixpence to know every syllable of the whole
transaction," said Scaresby. "A man that has passed, as I have, the last
twenty-five years of his life between Rome, Florence, and Naples, has
devilish little to learn of what the world calls scandal."

"I suppose you must indeed possess a wide experience," said Harcourt.

"Not a man in Europe, sir, could tell you as many dark passages of
good society! I kept a kind of book once,--a record of fashionable
delinquencies; but I had to give it up. It took me half my day to
chronicle even the passing events; and then my memory grew so retentive
by practice, I did n't want the reference, but could give you date, and
name, and place for every incident that has scandalized the world for
the last quarter of the century."

"And do you still possess this wonderful gift, Major?"

"Pretty well; not, perhaps, to the same extent I once did. You see,
Colonel Harcourt,"--here his voice became low and confidential,--"some
twenty, or indeed fifteen years back, it was only persons of actual
condition that permitted themselves the liberty to do these things; but,
hang it, sir! now you have your middle-class folk as profligate as their
betters. Jones, or Smith, or Thompson runs away with his neighbor's
wife, cheats at cards, and forges his friend's name, just as if he had
the best blood in his veins, and fourteen quarterings on his escutcheon.
What memory, then, I ask you, could retain all the shortcomings of
these people?"

"But I 'd really not trouble my head with such ignoble delinquents,"
said Harcourt.

"Nor do I, sir, save when, as will sometimes happen, they have a
footing, with one leg at least, in good society. For, in the present
state of the world, a woman with a pretty face, and a man with a
knowledge of horseflesh, may move in any circle they please."