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Staveley curled his lip and said that you might have the most

artistic tastes, but that you were a man whom no pure-minded girl

should be allowed to know, and whom no chaste woman should sit in

the same room with. I reminded him that I was a friend of yours,

and asked him what he meant. He told me. He told me right out

before everybody. It was horrible! Why is your friendship so

fatal to young men? There was that wretched boy in the Guards who

committed suicide. You were his great friend. There was Sir Henry

Ashton, who had to leave England with a tarnished name. You and

he were inseparable. What about Adrian Singleton and his dreadful

end? What about Lord Kent's only son and his career? I met his

father yesterday in St. James's Street. He seemed broken with

shame and sorrow. What about the young Duke of Perth? What sort

of life has he got now? What gentleman would associate with him?"