courted and much
plundered. At the age of twenty-five he found himself one of the leaders
of fashion, renowned chiefly for reckless daring where-ever honour could
be plucked out of the nettle danger: a steeple-chaser, whose exploits
made a quiet man's hair stand on end; a rider across country, taking
leaps which a more cautious huntsman carefully avoided. Known at Paris
as well as in London, he had been admired by ladies whose smiles had
cost him duels, the marks of which still remained in glorious scars
on his person. No man ever seemed more likely to come to direst
grief before attaining the age of thirty, for at twenty-seven all the
accumulations of his minority were gone; and his estate, which, when he
came of age, was scarcely three thousand a year, but entirely at his own
disposal, was mortgaged up to its eyes.

His friends began to shake their heads and call him "poor fellow;" but,
with all his wild faults, Leopold Travers had been wholly pure from the
two vices out of which a man does not often redeem himself. He had never
drunk and he had never gambled. His nerves were not broken, his brain
was not besotted. There was plenty of health in him yet, mind and body.
At the critical period of his life he married for love, and his choice
was a most felicitous one. The lady had no fortune; but though handsome
and high-born, she had no taste for extravagance, and no desire for
other society than that of the man she loved. So when he said, "Let us
settle in the country and try our best to live on a few hundreds, lay
by, and keep the old place out of the market," she consented with a
joyful heart: and marvel it was to all how this wild Leopold Travers
did settle down; did take to cultivating his home farm with his men from
sunrise to sunset like a common tenant-farmer; did contrive to pay the
interest on the mortgages, and keep his head above water. After some
years of pupilage in this school of thrift, during which his habits
became formed and his whole character braced, Leopold Travers suddenly
found himself again rich, through the wife whom he had so prudently
married without other dower than her love and her virtues. Her only
brother, Lord Eagleton, a Scotch peer, had been engaged in marriage to a
young lady, considered to be a rare prize in the lottery of wedlock.
The marriage was broken off under very disastrous circumstances; but the
young lord, good-looking and agreeable, was naturally expected to seek
speedy con