inner, and the opera, sufficiently filled up the time of
one who, while he courted pleasure, was not difficult in his amusements.
And for _this_ he could continue, with the utmost calmness and freedom
from anxiety, a scale of expenditure which was rapidly dissipating his
hereditary estates. His son he treated with indulgence and liberality,
and when he saw him, which was seldom, with great kindness of manner. He
encouraged him in all the idle and expensive habits of a gentleman of
fortune, while he was utterly destroying the property which could alone
support them.

He died suddenly; a fever carried him off at the age of fifty. Had he
lived three years longer, he would have spent every shilling he
possessed. What had he intended to do _then_? It is impossible to say.
To all appearance he had never entertained the question. When young
Winston had paid off his father's debts and his own, he who had
expected to enter into an ample revenue found himself in the possession
only of a few thousand pounds. This was all his patrimony. What to do he
had not yet resolved; but this reverse had not prevented him from
accomplishing a long cherished wish of visiting Italy. Some idea also
was floating in his mind that perhaps he should select some place upon
the Continent where to reside permanently upon the small pittance that
was left to him.

It will be now seen at a glance, why it was that Winston fled from the
attractions of Mildred at Genoa: he knew himself to be poor, and had
become acquainted with the peculiar, and perhaps dependent, position in
which Miss Willoughby stood. No one will blame him for running away from
Genoa; but ought he to have lingered at Rome? We fear our friend was not
remarkable for resolution of character. He had ardent feelings, and to
counteract them he had just perceptions of what life demands from us;
but he lacked, evidently, in steadiness of purpose.

And what now _could_ he do? Flight, as at Genoa, was out of the
question. He could not, by any rude or abrupt behaviour, forfeit that
share of Mildred's esteem which he possessed. On his way back to his
hotel he resolved--it was the utmost that his prudence suggested--that
he would take occasion quietly and unostentatiously to intimate that,
like Bassanio,

"All the wealth he had
Ran in his veins, he was a gentleman."

It would then be seen by Miss Willoughby, as clearly as by himself, that
his _attentions_, to use the appro