e's house
on the Sunday with the object of so doing. As far as that promise had
been given it was broken, for on the Sunday he was not seen in Bruton
Street. Though not much given to severe thinking, he did feel that on
this occasion there was need for thought. His father's property was
not very large. His father and his grandfather had both been
extravagant men, and he himself had done something towards adding to
the family embarrassments. It had been an understood thing, since he
had commenced life, that he was to marry an heiress. In such families
as his, when such results have been achieved, it is generally
understood that matters shall be put right by an heiress. It has
become an institution, like primogeniture, and is almost as
serviceable for maintaining the proper order of things. Rank squanders
money; trade makes it;--and then trade purchases rank by re-gilding its
splendour. The arrangement, as it affects the aristocracy generally,
is well understood, and was quite approved of by the old marquis--so
that he had felt himself to be justified in eating up the property,
which his son's future marriage would renew as a matter of course.
Nidderdale himself had never dissented, had entertained no fanciful
theory opposed to this view, had never alarmed his father by any
liaison tending towards matrimony with any undowered beauty;--but had
claimed his right to 'have his fling' before he devoted himself to the
reintegration of the family property. His father had felt that it
would be wrong and might probably be foolish to oppose so natural a
desire. He had regarded all the circumstances of 'the fling' with
indulgent eyes. But there arose some little difference as to the
duration of the fling, and the father had at last found himself
compelled to inform his son that if the fling were carried on much
longer it must be done with internecine war between himself and his
heir. Nidderdale, whose sense and temper were alike good, saw the
thing quite in the proper light. He assured his father that he had no
intention of 'cutting up rough,' declared that he was ready for the
heiress as soon as the heiress should be put in his way, and set
himself honestly about the task imposed on him. This had all been
arranged at Auld Reekie Castle during the last winter, and the reader
knows the result.

But the affair had assumed abnormal difficulties. Perhaps the Marquis
had been wrong in flying at wealth which was reputed to be almost
unl