portunities of forwarding his intimacy with
Fanny, and he did not neglect them. To give him his due, he played his
cards as well as his father could wish him. He first of all overcame
the dislike with which she was prepared to regard him; he then
interested her about himself; and, before he had been a week at Grey
Abbey, she felt that she had a sort of cousinly affection for him. He
got her to talk with a degree of interest about himself; and when he
could do that, there was no wonder that Tierney should have fears for
his friend's interests. Not that there was any real occasion for them.
Fanny Wyndham was not the girl to be talked out of, or into, a real
passion, by anyone.

"Now, tell me the truth, Fanny," said Kilcullen, as they were sitting
over the fire together in the library, one dark afternoon, before they
went to dress for dinner; "hadn't you been taught to look on me as a
kind of ogre--a monster of iniquity, who spoke nothing but oaths, and
did nothing but sin?"

"Not exactly that: but I won't say I thought you were exactly just what
you ought to be."

"But didn't you think I was exactly what I ought not to have been?
Didn't you imagine, now, that I habitually sat up all night, gambling,
and drinking buckets of champagne and brandy-and-water? And that I lay
in bed all day, devising iniquity in my dreams? Come now, tell the
truth, and shame the devil; if I am the devil, I know people have made
me out to be."

"Why, really, Adolphus, I never calculated how your days and nights
were spent. But if I am to tell the truth, I fear some of them might
have been passed to better advantage."

"Which of us, Fanny, mightn't, with truth, say the same of ourselves?"

"Of course, none of us," said Fanny; "don't think I'm judging you; you
asked me the question,--and I suppose you wanted an answer."

"I did; I wanted a true one--for though you may never have given
yourself much trouble to form an opinion about me, I am anxious that
you should do so now. I don't want to trouble you with what is done and
past; I don't want to make it appear that I have not been thoughtless
and imprudent--wicked and iniquitous, if you are fond of strong terms;
neither do I want to trouble you with confessing all my improprieties,
that I may regularly receive absolution. But I do wish you to believe
that I have done nothing which should exclude me from your future good
opinion; from your friendship and esteem."

"I am not of an unforgivin