Now, is it not strange that two really pretty girls, with fully enough of amiable and pleasing qualities to have excited the attention and won the affections of many a man, should have gone on for years,--for, alas! they did so in every climate, under every sun,--to waste their sweetness in this miserable career of intrigue and man-trap, and yet nothing come of it?
But so it was.

The first question a newly-landed regiment was asked, if coming from where they resided, was, "Well, how are the girls ?" "Oh, gloriously.

Matty is there." "Ah, indeed! poor thing." "Has Fan sported a new habit ?" "Is it the old gray with the hussar braiding?
Confound it, that was seedy when I saw them in Corfu.

And Mother Dal as fat and vulgar as ever ?" "Dawson of ours was the last, and was called up for sentence when we were ordered away; of course, he bolted," etc.

Such was the invariable style of question and answer concerning them; and although some few, either from good feeling or fastidiousness, relished but little the mode in which it had become habitual to treat them, I grieve to say that, generally, they were pronounced fair game for every species of flirtation and love-making without any "intentions" for the future.