, shall I
gain or lose? I grant that she has the finest neck and shoulders I ever
saw out of marble; but far from being in love with her, she gives me a
feeling like fear and aversion. Add to this that she has evidently no
kinder sentiment for me than I for her; and if she once had a heart,
that young gentleman has long since coaxed it away. Pleasant auspices,
these, for matrimony to a poor invalid who wishes at least to decline
and to die in peace! Moreover, if I were rich enough to marry as I
pleased; if I were what, perhaps, I ought to be, heir to Laughton,--why,
there is a certain sweet Mary in the world, whose eyes are softer than
Lucretia Clavering's. But that is a dream! On the other hand, if I do
not win this girl, and my poor kinsman give her all, or nearly all, his
possessions, Vernon Grange goes to the usurers, and the king will find
a lodging for myself. What does it matter? I cannot live above two or
three years at the most, and can only hope, therefore, that dear stout
old Sir Miles may outlive me. At thirty-three I have worn out fortune
and life; little pleasure could Laughton give me,--brief pain the Bench.
'Fore Gad, the philosophy of the thing is on the whole against sour
looks and the noose!" Thus deciding in the progress of his revery, he
smiled, and changed his position. The sun had set, the twilight was
over, the moon rose in splendour from amidst a thick copse of mingled
beech and oak; the beams fell full on the face of the muser, and the
face seemed yet paler and the exhaustion of premature decay yet more
evident, by that still and melancholy light: all ruins gain dignity by
the moon. This was a ruin nobler than that which painters place on their
canvas,--the ruin, not of stone and brick, but of humanity and spirit;
the wreck of man prematurely old, not stricken by great sorrow, not
bowed by great toil, but fretted and mined away by small pleasures and
poor excitements,--small and poor, but daily, hourly, momently at their
gnome-like work. Something of the gravity and the true lesson of the
hour and scene, perhaps, forced itself upon a mind little given to
sentiment, for Vernon rose languidly and muttered,--

"My poor mother hoped better things from me. It is well, after all, that
it is broken off with Mary. Why should there be any one to weep for me?
I can the better die smiling, as I have lived."

Meanwhile, as it is necessary we should follow each of the principal
characters we have introduce