t, and she has ready money. I know her settlements."

"She shan't do it," said the Major quietly: "I'll write to her
to-night."

Elsley looked at him keenly. "You think, then, sir, that you can, by
simply writing, stop this intrigue?"

The Major did not answer. He was deep in thought.

"I shouldn't wonder if he did," said Scoutbush; "two to one on his
baulking the plunger!"

"She is at Lord ----'s now, at those silly private theatricals. Is he
there?"

"No," said Mellot; "he tried hard for an invitation--stooped to work me
and Sabina. I believe she told him that she would sooner see him in the
Morgue than help him; and he is gone to the moors now, I believe."

"There is time then: I will write to her to-night;" and Campbell took up
his hat and went home to do it.

"Ah," said Scoutbush, taking his cigar meditatively from his mouth, "I
wonder how he does it! It's a gift, I always say, a wonderful gift!
Before he has been a week in a house, he'll have the confidence of every
woman in it,--and 'gad, he does it by saying the rudest things!--and the
confidence of all the youngsters the week after."

"A somewhat dangerous gift," said Elsley, drily.

"Ah, yes; he might play tricks if he chose: but there's the wonder, that
he don't. I'd answer for him with my own sister. I do every day of my
life--for I believe he knows how many pins she puts into her dress--and
yet there he is. As I said once in the mess-room--there was a youngster
there who took on himself to be witty, and talked about the still sow
supping the milk--the snob! You recollect him, Mellot? the attorney's
son from Brompton, who sold out;--we shaved his mustachios, put a bear
in his bed, and sent him home to his ma--And he said that Major Campbell
might be very pious, and all that: but he'd warrant--they were the
fellow's own words,--that he took his lark on the sly, like other men--
the snob! so I told him, I was no better than the rest, and no more I
am; but if any man dared to say that the Major was not as honest as his
own sister, I was his man at fifteen paces. And so I am, Claude!"

All which did not increase Elsley's love to the Major, conscious as he
was that Lucia's confidence was a thing which he had not wholly; and
which it would be very dangerous to him for any other man to have at
all.

Into the drawing-room they went. Frank Headley had been asked up to tea;
and he stood at the piano, listening to Valencia's singing.

As they came in, t