e
so near, dare I ask you to ring the bell?' 'Monsieur Dalibard, with the
utmost deference, I venture to disagree with you.' However, don't let
my foolish susceptibility ruffle your pride. And you, too, have a worthy
object in view, which might well detain you from roach and jack-fish.
Have you stolen your interview with the superb Lucretia?"

"Yes, stolen, as you say; and, like all thieves not thoroughly hardened,
I am ashamed of my gains."

"Sit down, my boy,--this is a bank in ten thousand; there, that old root
to lean your elbow on, this soft moss for your cushion: sit down and
confess. You have something on your mind that preys on you; we are old
college friends,--out with it!"

"There is no resisting you, Ardworth," said Mainwaring, smiling, and
drawn from his reserve and his gloom by the frank good-humour of his
companion. "I should like, I own, to make a clean breast of it; and
perhaps I may profit by your advice. You know, in the first place, that
after I left college, my father, seeing me indisposed for the Church, to
which he had always destined me in his own heart, and for which, indeed,
he had gone out of his way to maintain me at the University, gave me the
choice of his own business as a surveyor and land-agent, or of entering
into the mercantile profession. I chose the latter, and went to
Southampton, where we have a relation in business, to be initiated
into the elementary mysteries. There I became acquainted with a good
clergyman and his wife, and in that house I passed a great part of my
time."

"With the hope, I trust, on better consideration, of gratifying your
father's ambition and learning how to starve with gentility on a cure."

"Not much of that, I fear."

"Then the clergyman had a daughter?"

"You are nearer the mark now," said Mainwaring, colouring,--"though it
was not his daughter. A young lady lived in his family, not even
related to him; she was placed there with a certain allowance by a rich
relation. In a word, I admired, perhaps I loved, this young person; but
she was without an independence, and I not yet provided even with
the substitute of money,--a profession. I fancied (do not laugh at my
vanity) that my feelings might be returned. I was in alarm for her as
well as myself; I sounded the clergyman as to the chance of obtaining
the consent of her rich relation, and was informed that he thought it
hopeless. I felt I had no right to invite her to poverty and ruin, and
still le