and he knew that on his own talents and
exertions must depend his own rising in the world. He was of excellent
family, but poor, counting a relative in the old Earl of Mount Severn.
The possibility of his succeeding to the earldom never occurred to him,
for three healthy lives, two of them young, stood between him and
the title. Yet those have died off, one of apoplexy, one of fever,
in Africa, the third boating at Oxford; and the young Temple student,
William Vane, suddenly found himself Earl of Mount Severn, and the
lawful possessor of sixty thousand a year.

His first idea was, that he should never be able to spend the money;
that such a sum, year by year, could _not_ be spent. It was a wonder
his head was not turned by adulation at the onset, for he was courted,
flattered and caressed by all classes, from a royal duke downward. He
became the most attractive man of his day, the lion in society;
for independent of his newly-acquired wealth and title, he was of
distinguished appearance and fascinating manners. But unfortunately, the
prudence which had sustained William Vane, the poor law student, in his
solitary Temple chambers entirely forsook William Vane, the young Earl
of Mount Severn, and he commenced his career on a scale of speed so
great, that all staid people said he was going to ruin and the deuce
headlong.

But a peer of the realm, and one whose rent-roll is sixty thousand per
annum, does not go to ruin in a day. There sat the earl, in his library
now, in his nine-and-fortieth year, and ruin had not come yet--that is,
it had not overwhelmed him. But the embarrassments which had clung
to him, and been the destruction of his tranquility, the bane of his
existence, who shall describe them? The public knew them pretty well,
his private friends knew better, his creditors best; but none, save
himself knew, or could ever know, the worrying torment that was his
portion, wellnigh driving him to distraction. Years ago, by dint of
looking things steadily in the face, and by economizing, he might have
retrieved his position; but he had done what most people do in such
cases--put off the evil day _sine die_, and gone on increasing his
enormous list of debts. The hour of exposure and ruin was now advancing
fast.

Perhaps the earl himself was thinking so, as he sat there before an
enormous mass of papers which strewed the library table. His thoughts
were back in the past. That was a foolish match of his, that Gretna
Gr