As is generally the case, immunity from punishment was very far from working either reformation or improvement. The iniquities which Fred had committed in the green tree were perpetrated by him still more villanously in the brown. At the age of thirty-six, there were few atrocities, chiefly under the rose, of which he had not been guilty; and it was at that age--an age at which the wild oats are supposed to be sown, and the new leaf lastingly turned over--that the ex-dragoon committed the act of which “old Dub” entertained so vague a recollection, but the consequences of which eventually drove Colonel Fred (with all his debts upon his head, and very little money in his pockets) to Australia. This climax in the career of the ex-dragoon took place about a dozen years before the opening of my story; and Colonel Norcott, after spending ten of those years in banishment, had returned to his native land a wiser if not a better man. Nor had he, as we already know, returned alone; for there was a Mrs. Norcott--a colonial heiress, it was said--who had taken pity on Fred’s poverty and loneliness, and endowed him with her hand and fortune. At the time my story opens, two years, or nearly so, had elapsed since Colonel Norcott--gay, agreeable, but slightly under a cloud--made his reappearance on the stage of the London world. How or at what period terms had been made with the creditors to whose former leniency the prodigal owed so much, history deponeth not. That they were satisfied with the turn affairs had taken was evidenced by the fact that “the Colonel” roamed, with a free step and _jarret tendre_, about his former haunts; while for the nonce--whether such a state of things would last remained to be seen--a veil seemed by common consent (amongst the laxest portion of Colonel Norcott’s former acquaintances) to be thrown over his past delinquencies, and _non mi ricordo_, save amongst the ultra strict, was as regarded his errors the order of the day. * * * * * “Who is that gentleman, John?” asked Honor, her face still flushed with the crimson tide that a prolonged stare from Colonel Norcott’s bold insinuating eyes had thrown into it. “I fancy I have seen him before. Did not he come to the Paddocks one day about buying a horse?” “A great many people do that, my dear,” responded John absently. “Came to buy a horse, did he? And which of all these gentlemen is it that you mean?” “Which? O, that one! there he goes--the tall man in the light coat; you can see him now between the trees, talking to the person that you call Jack Winthrop.”