lmar wanted,--good family, a
fine fortune, and the very temper a clever woman usually contrives to
rule with absolute sway.

There would be, unfortunately, no novelty in recording the steps by
which such a man is ruined. He did everything that men do who are bent
upon testing Fortune to the utmost. He lent large sums to his "friends;"
he lost larger ones to them. When he did win, none ever paid him, except
by a good-humored jest upon his credit at Coutts's. "What the devil do
you want with money, Sir Dudley?" was an appeal he could never reply to.
He ran horses at Ascot, and got "squeezed;" he played at "Crocky's," and
fared no better; but he was the favorite of the corps. "We could never
get on without Dudley," was a common remark; and it satisfied him that,
with all his extravagance, he had made an investment in the hearts at
least of his comrades. A few months longer of this "fast" career would,
in all likelihood, have ruined him. He broke his leg by a fall in a
steeplechase, and was thus driven, by sheer necessity, to lay up, and
keep quiet for a season. Now came Colonel Delmar's opportunity; the
moment the news reached Coventry, he set off with his daughter to
Leamington. With the steeplechasing, hazard-playing, betting, drinking,
yachting, driving Sir Dudley, there was no chance of even time for their
plans; but with a sick man on the sofa, bored by his inactivity, hipped
for want of his usual resources, the game was open. The Colonel's visit,
too, had such an air of true kindness!

Broughton had left quarters without leave; but instead of reprimands,
arrests, and Heaven knows what besides, there was Colonel Delmar, the
fine old fellow, shaking his finger in mock rebuke, and saying, "Ah,
Dudley, my boy, I came down to give you a rare scolding; but this sad
business has saved you!" And Lydia also, against whom he had ever felt a
dislike,--that prejudice your boisterous and noisy kind of men ever feel
to clever women, whose sarcasms they know themselves exposed to,--why,
she was gentle good-nature and easy sisterlike kindness itself! She did
not, as the phrase goes, "nurse him," but she seldom left the room where
he lay. She read aloud, selecting with a marvellous instinct the very
kind of books he fancied,--novels, tales of every-day life, things of
whose truthfulness he could form some judgment; and sketches wherein the
author's views were about on a level with his own. She would sit at the
window, too, and amuse