"Break off with the widow!" cried Jack, with the wondering accent of a man who has heard some impossible proposal. "Certainly; why not?" "Will you be kind enough to inform me what thing short of death could ever deliver me out of her hands?" asked Jack, mildly. "Elope, as you proposed." "That's the very thing I thought of; but the trouble is, in that case she would devote the rest of her life to vengeance. 'Hell hath no fury like a woman wronged,' you know. She'd move heaven and earth, and never end, till I was drummed out of the regiment. No, my boy. To do that would be to walk with open eyes to disgrace, and shame, and infamy, with a whole community, a whole regiment, and the Horse-Guards at the back of them, all banded together to crush me. Such a fate as this would hardly be the proper thing to give to a wife that a fellow loves." "Can't you manage to make the widow disgusted with you?" "No, I can't," said Jack, peevishly. "What do you mean?" "Why, make it appear as though you only wanted to marry her for her money." "Oh, hang it, man! how could I do that? I can't play a part, under any circumstances, and that particular part would be so infernally mean, that it would be impossible. I'm such an ass that, if she were even to hint at that, I'd resent it furiously. "Can't you make her afraid about your numerous gallantries?" "Afraid? why she glories in them. So many feathers in her cap, and all that, you know." "Can't you frighten her about your debts and general extravagance--hint that you're a gambler, and so on?" "And then she'd inform me, very affectionately, that she intends to be my guardian angel, and save me from evil for all the rest of my life." "Can't you tell her all about your solemn engagement to Miss Phillips?" "My engagement to Miss Phillips? Why, man alive, she knows that as well as you do." "Knows it! How did she find it out?" "How? Why I told her myself." "The deuce you did!" Jack was silent. "Well, then," said I, after some further thought, "why not tell her every thing?" "Tell her every thing?" "Yes--exactly what you've been telling me. Make a clean breast of it." Jack looked at me for some time with a curious expression. "My dear boy," said he, at length, "do you mean to say that you are really in earnest in making that proposition?" "Most solemnly in earnest," said I.