bserved Edward, emphatically; "I don't think
she would."

"And I shall never have money. Confound stingy parents! It's a question
whether I shall get Wrexby: there's no entail. I'm heir to the governor's
temper and his gout, I dare say. He'll do as he likes with the estate. I
call it beastly unfair."

Edward asked how much the opal had cost.

"Oh, nothing," said Algernon; "that is, I never pay for jewellery."

Edward was curious to know how he managed to obtain it.

"Why, you see," Algernon explained, "they, the jewellers--I've got two or
three in hand--the fellows are acquainted with my position, and they
speculate on my expectations. There is no harm in that if they like it. I
look at their trinkets, and say, 'I've no money;' and they say, 'Never
mind;' and I don't mind much. The understanding is, that I pay them when
I inherit."

"In gout and bad temper?"

"Gad, if I inherit nothing else, they'll have lots of that for
indemnification. It's a good system, Ned; it enables a young fellow like
me to get through the best years of his life--which I take to be his
youth--without that squalid poverty bothering him. You can make presents,
and wear a pin or a ring, if it takes your eye. You look well, and you
make yourself agreeable; and I see nothing to complain of in that."

"The jewellers, then, have established an institution to correct one of
the errors of Providence."

"Oh! put it in your long-winded way, if you like," said Algernon; "all I
know is, that I should often have wanted a five-pound note, if--that is,
if I hadn't happened to be dressed like a gentleman. With your prospects,
Ned, I should propose to charming Peggy tomorrow morning early. We
mustn't let her go out of the family. If I can't have her, I'd rather you
would."

"You forget the incumbrances on one side," said Edward, his face
darkening.

"Oh! that's all to be managed," Algernon rallied him. "Why, Ned, you'll
have twenty thousand a-year, if you have a penny; and you'll go into
Parliament, and give dinners, and a woman like Peggy Lovell 'd intrigue
for you like the deuce."

"A great deal too like," Edward muttered.

"As for that pretty girl," continued Algernon; but Edward peremptorily
stopped all speech regarding Dahlia. His desire was, while he made
holiday, to shut the past behind a brazen gate; which being communicated
sympathetically to his cousin, the latter chimed to it in boisterous
shouts of anticipated careless jollity at Fair