“They were running down love and the ladies, Colonel, and I was calling upon all true Irishmen to help me to support their cause.” The young lieutenant had recovered sufficiently from his fright to wing this speech with a little mischievous barb, for Lady Florencecourt was a notoriously undesirable helpmeet. The Colonel laughed harshly. “Support the cause of the ladies? Very like supporting the cause of the cannon-balls that come whizzing about your ears from the enemy’s camp! While you are praising their velocity, and the directness of their flight, whir-r-r comes one through the air and stops your fool’s tongue for ever.” The dry grimness with which he spoke set the young men laughing. But Massey, encouraged by perceiving that his chief was in good humour, began again softly to sing: “Oh, say, wilt thou weep when they darken the fame Of a life that for thee was resigned?” “Not at all, my boy,” broke in the Colonel, in his file-like voice; “she will say: ‘What a fool that boy was, and how tiresome he got at the last!’ Nothing, believe me, wearies a woman so much as a _grande passion_. Trust me; I once watched a friend through all the phases of one.” “Did he die, Colonel?” asked Massey, in a small voice. “No, but he had to take a very strong remedy. Well, now, lads, I don’t want to impose a misogynist’s society on you any longer, especially as I have small hopes of making any converts under five-and-twenty. Only take an old fellow’s advice: Singe your wings at as many candles as possible, and you will run the less risk of being burnt to a cinder by any one of them. Good-night.” They raised their hats to him, and he hailed a passing hansom and drove off, just as they turned westward into one of the streets leading into Portland Place. “He himself was the friend, I suppose,” said Dicky, when they had commented on the Colonel’s unusual sociability. “The _grande passion_ was certainly not for Lady F.,” said Massey. “By Jove, if she was the remedy, it _was_ a strong one!” added Lauriston. “I shall take his advice, and distribute my attentions more,” remarked Massey, who was never in the society of any woman under fifty, of high or low degree, without devoting all his energies to ingratiating himself with her. “Old buffers like that always talk in that strained fashion about the dangers of women, but as a matter of fact it isn’t till you’re over fifty yourself that they become dangerous at all.” “No,” said Lauriston, with a _blasé_ air pardonable at three-and-twenty. “Hang it all, the difficulty is, not to avoid their charms, but to find a girl decent-looking enough to dance with twice and take down to supper without being bored to death!” “You don’t find many _grandes passions_ knockin’ about nowadays,” observed Dicky sagely. “At least not in our set,” amended Massey; “nor in this country.” “Oh! I suppose they’re common enough over the Channel!”