ng the bell, Lionel."

"You don't know his name, yet you know him, ma'am, and would allow your
son to see LIFE under his auspices! I beg you ten thousand pardons; but
even ladies the most cautious, mothers the most watchful, are exposed
to--"

"Immense temptations,--that is--to--to--"

"I understand perfectly, my dear Mrs. Haughton."

The footman appeared. "Did that gentleman leave a card?"

"No, ma'am."

"Did not you ask his name when he entered?"

"Yes, ma'am, but he said he would announce himself." When the footman
had withdrawn, Mrs. Haughton exclaimed piteously, "I have been to blame,
Colonel; I see it. But Lionel will tell you how I came to know the
gentleman,--the gentleman who nearly ran over me, Lionel, and then spoke
so kindly about your dear father."

"Oh, that is the person!--I supposed so," cried Lionel, kissing his
mother, who was inclined to burst into tears. "I can explain it all now,
Colonel Morley. Any one who says a kind word about my father warms my
mother's heart to him at once; is it not so, Mother dear?"

"And long be it so," said Colonel Morley, with grateful earnestness;
"and may such be my passport to your confidence, Mrs. Haughton. Charles
was my old schoolfellow,--a little boy when I and Darrell were in the
sixth form; and, pardon me, when I add, that if that gentleman were ever
Charles Haughton's particular friend, he could scarcely have been a very
wise one. For unless his appearance greatly belies his years he must
have been little more than a boy when Charles Haughton left Lionel
fatherless."

Here, in the delicacy of tact, seeing that Mrs. Haughton looked ashamed
of the subject, and seemed aware of her imprudence, the Colonel rose,
with a request--cheerfully granted--that Lionel might be allowed to come
to breakfast with him the next morning.

CHAPTER XI.

A man of the world, having accepted a troublesome charge, considers
"what he will do with it;" and, having promptly decided, is sure,
first, that he could not have done better; and, secondly, that much
may be said to prove that he could not have done worse.

Reserving to a later occasion anymore detailed description of Colonel
Morley, it suffices for the present to say that he was a man of a very
fine understanding as applied to the special world in which he lived.
Though no one had a more numerous circle of friends, and though with
many of those friends he was on that footing of familiar intimacy whic