Page:The Private Life, Lord Beaupré, The Visits (New York, Harper & Brothers, 1893).djvu/115

had a jaw like that and had marked you—really marked you, mind, you felt your safety oozing away. He had given them during the past three months, all those terrible girls, every sort of present that Bond Street could supply; but these demonstrations had only been held to constitute another pledge. Therefore what was a fellow to do? Besides, there were other portents; the air was thick with them, as the sky over battle-fields was darkened by the flight of vultures. They were flocking, the birds of prey, from every quarter, and every girl in England, by Jove! was going to be thrown at his head. What had he done to deserve such a fate? He wanted to stop in England and see all sorts of things through; but how could he stand there and face such a charge? Yet what good would it do to bolt? Wherever he should go there would be fifty of them there first. On his honor he could say that he didn't deserve it; he had never, to his own sense, been a flirt, such a flirt at least as to have given any one a handle. He appealed candidly to Mary Gosselin to know whether his past conduct justified such penalties.