had launched out
into every expensive pursuit. What we often hear applied to others
figuratively, was strictly applicable to him; he never knew the value
of money; he never knew that anything one desired could be overpaid for.
The end came at last. With a yacht ready stored and fitted out for a
Mediterranean cruise, with three horses heavily engaged at Doncaster,
with a shooting-lodge filled with distinguished company in the
Highlands, with negotiations all but completed for the Hooksley hounds,
with speculations rife as to whether the Duchess of This or the
Countess of That had secured him for a daughter or a niece, there came,
one morning, the startling information from his solicitor that a
large loan he had contemplated raising was rendered impossible by some
casualty of the money-market Recourse must be had to the Jews; heavy
liabilities incurred at Newmarket must be met at once and at any cost.
A week of disaster fell exactly at this conjuncture; he lost largely at
the Portland, largely on the turf; a brother officer, for whom he had
given surety, levanted immensely in debt; while a local bank, in which
a considerable sum of his was vested, failed. The men of sixty per cent
saved him from shipwreck; but they took the craft for the salvage, and
Conway was ruined.

Amidst the papers which Conway had sent to his solicitor as securities
for the loan, a number of family documents had got mingled, old deeds
and titles to estates of which the young man had not so much as heard,
claims against property of whose existence he knew nothing. When
questioned about them by the man of law, he referred him coolly to his
mother, saying, frankly, "it was a matter on which he had never troubled
his head.'" Mrs. Conway herself scarcely knew more. She had heard that
there was a claim in the family to a peerage; her husband used to allude
to it in his own dreamy, indolent fashion, and say that it ought to be
looked after, and that was all.

Had the information come to the mind of an active or enterprising man of
business, it might have fared differently. The solicitor to the family
was, however, himself a lethargic, lazy sort of person, and he sent back
the papers to Mrs. Conway, stating that he was not sure "something might
not be made of them;" that is, added he, "if he had five or six thousand
pounds to expend upon searches, and knew where to prosecute them."

This was but sorry comfort, but it did not fall upon a heart high in
ho