In gout and bad temper?"

"Gad, if I inherit nothing else, they'll have lots of that for
indemnification. It's a good system, Ned; it enables a young fellow like
me to get through the best years of his life--which I take to be
his youth--without that squalid poverty bothering him. You can make
presents, and wear a pin or a ring, if it takes your eye. You look well,
and you make yourself agreeable; and I see nothing to complain of in
that."

"The jewellers, then, have established an institution to correct one of
the errors of Providence."

"Oh! put it in your long-winded way, if you like," said Algernon; "all I
know is, that I should often have wanted a five-pound note, if--that
is, if I hadn't happened to be dressed like a gentleman. With your
prospects, Ned, I should propose to charming Peggy tomorrow morning
early. We mustn't let her go out of the family. If I can't have her, I'd
rather you would."

"You forget the incumbrances on one side," said Edward, his face
darkening.

"Oh! that's all to be managed," Algernon rallied him. "Why, Ned, you'll
have twenty thousand a-year, if you have a penny; and you'll go into
Parliament, and give dinners, and a woman like Peggy Lovell 'd intrigue
for you like the deuce."

"A great deal too like," Edward muttered.

"As for that pretty girl," continued Algernon; but Edward peremptorily
stopped all speech regarding Dahlia. His desire was, while he made
holiday, to shut the past behind a brazen gate; which being communicated
sympathetically to his cousin, the latter chimed to it in boisterous
shouts of anticipated careless jollity at Fairly Park, crying out how
they would hunt and snap fingers at Jews, and all mortal sorrows, and
have a fortnight, or three weeks, perhaps a full month, of the finest
life possible to man, with good horses, good dinners, good wines,
good society, at command, and a queen of a woman to rule and order
everything. Edward affected a disdainful smile at the prospect; but was
in reality the weaker of the two in his thirst for it.

They arrived at Fairly in time to dress for dinner, and in the
drawing-room Mrs. Lovell sat to receive them. She looked up to Edward's
face an imperceptible half-second longer than the ordinary form of
welcome accords--one of the looks which are nothing at all when there
is no spiritual apprehension between young people, and are so much when
there is. To Algernon, who was gazing opals on her, she simply gave her
fingers. At