"Of my age, you mean! A friend of twenty-eight years alarms one of sixteen, for you are sixteen, I believe." "Seventeen," replied Esther with comical dignity. "Well, I love you, and I want you to love me. Friendship is the true sentiment which unites women, the only one which relieves their delicacy of the fear of wounds, their devotion of treason. Oh, if I could but spare you some of the griefs of my life!" "You have suffered?" "Frightfully!" said Bella in a flippant tone which belied the tragic significance of the word. Then she continued:-- "Men are all wretches, but the worst one among them all is perhaps Lord Mowbray." "What has he done?" "He has accomplished everything that a man of his age can dream of in the way of forbidden and perverse actions. First, you must know that the late Lord Mowbray was the greatest libertine of his time. He was interested in that famous abbey of Medmonham with Lord Sandwich, Sir Francis Dashwood, and that abominable John Wilkes, the author of the 'Essay upon Woman,' whose soul is still more hideous than his visage. In their orgies they parodied the very ceremonies of religion. It is related that one day--one night, rather--Lord Sandwich administered the Holy Sacrament to a dog, carrying out the full rites." "How horrible!" exclaimed Esther, clasping her hands. "Is it not?" murmured Lady Vereker in the same tone; at the same time an imperceptible smile appeared in the corners of both pairs of lips. "But let us leave the father in the abode for which he was certainly destined, and speak of the son. He has had as his instructor in vice his own tutor, a Frenchman named Lebeau, who took good care to ruin his pupil in early life, the better to master him later. It was in company with this man that he made the tour of Europe, stopping for the most part in France and Italy. He was but a mere boy when he grossly deceived the daughter of the clergyman at Mowbray Park. It is said, too, that he was the instigator and confidant of the first follies of the Prince of Wales. He is fiercely hated by the king, but especially so by the queen. He and his friends make it their boast that there is not an incorruptible woman in existence. Their debauchery differs from that of their fathers in that it is savored with villany. As formerly, these young gentlemen, who call themselves Mohawks, walk the streets at night with blackened faces, quarrel with inoffensive wayfarers, stop women, strip them and either beat or cast them naked into casks of pitch which they have placed beneath sheds, and laugh until they drown the cries of their victims. As for the watchmen, they prick their legs with their swords, bind them to the door-knockers, and oblige them to light the scene with their lanterns. These are only their malicious tricks, for they do worse. More than once they have profited by popular broils, or by the quarrels which have been common since the beginning of the war,