young
officers, and gay fellows of all sorts, and was flattered at being
welcomed among them; though it was a costly pleasure, and often left
a thorn of regret to vex his honest conscience. He was tempted to take
better rooms in a more fashionable street, leaving good Frau Tetzel to
lament his loss, and his artist neighbour, Fraulein Vogelstein, to shake
her grey ringlets and predict his return, a sadder and a wiser man.

The sum placed at his disposal for expenses and such simple pleasures
as his busy life could command seemed a fortune to Nat, though it was
smaller than generous Mr Laurie first proposed. Professor Bhaer wisely
counselled prudence, as Nat was unused to the care of money, and the
good man knew the temptations that a well-filled purse makes possible at
this pleasure-loving age. So Nat enjoyed his handsome little apartment
immensely, and insensibly let many unaccustomed luxuries creep in. He
loved his music and never missed a lesson; but the hours he should
have spent in patient practice were too often wasted at theatre, ball,
beer-garden, or club--doing no harm beyond that waste of precious time,
and money not his own; for he had no vices, and took his recreation like
a gentleman, so far. But slowly a change for the worse was beginning to
show itself, and he felt it. These first steps along the flowery road
were downward, not upward; and the constant sense of disloyalty which
soon began to haunt him made Nat feel, in the few quiet hours he gave
himself, that all was not well with him, spite of the happy whirl in
which he lived.

'Another month, and then I will be steady,' he said more than once,
trying to excuse the delay by the fact that all was new to him, that his
friends at home wished him to be happy, and that society was giving him
the polish he needed. But as each month slipped away it grew harder to
escape; he was inevitably drawn on, and it was so easy to drift with
the tide that he deferred the evil day as long as possible. Winter
festivities followed the more wholesome summer pleasures, and Nat found
them more costly; for the hospitable ladies expected some return from
the stranger; and carriages, bouquets, theatre tickets, and all the
little expenses a young man cannot escape at such times, told heavily
on the purse which seemed bottomless at first. Taking Mr Laurie for
his model, Nat became quite a gallant, and was universally liked; for
through all the newly acquired airs and graces the ge