Pluffles' Colonel should have ordered him back to his regiment when
he heard how things were going. But Pluffles had got himself
engaged to a girl in England the last time he went home; and if
there was one thing more than another which the Colonel detested,
it was a married subaltern. He chuckled when he heard of the
education of Pluffles, and said it was "good training for the boy."
But it was not good training in the least. It led him into
spending money beyond his means, which were good: above that, the
education spoilt an average boy and made it a tenth-rate man of an
objectionable kind. He wandered into a bad set, and his little
bill at Hamilton's was a thing to wonder at.

Then Mrs. Hauksbee rose to the occasion. She played her game
alone, knowing what people would say of her; and she played it for
the sake of a girl she had never seen. Pluffles' fiancee was to
come out, under the chaperonage of an aunt, in October, to be
married to Pluffles.

At the beginning of August, Mrs. Hauksbee discovered that it was
time to interfere. A man who rides much knows exactly what a horse
is going to do next before he does it. In the same way, a woman of
Mrs. Hauksbee's experience knows accurately how a boy will behave
under certain circumstances--notably when he is infatuated with one
of Mrs. Reiver's stamp. She said that, sooner or later, little
Pluffles would break off that engagement for nothing at all--simply
to gratify Mrs. Reiver, who, in return, would keep him at her feet
and in her service just so long as she found it worth her while.
She said she knew the signs of these things. If she did not, no
one else could.