ss had injured his character among his friends more
than he had done by the folly of three years. There had been a quarrel
between him and a brother officer, in which he had been the aggressor;
and, when the moment came in which a man's heart should have produced
manly conduct, he had first threatened and had then shown the white
feather. That was now a year since, and he had partly outlived the
evil;--but some men still remembered that Felix Carbury had been cowed,
and had cowered.

It was now his business to marry an heiress. He was well aware that it
was so, and was quite prepared to face his destiny. But he lacked
something in the art of making love. He was beautiful, had the manners
of a gentleman, could talk well, lacked nothing of audacity, and had
no feeling of repugnance at declaring a passion which he did not feel.
But he knew so little of the passion, that he could hardly make even a
young girl believe that he felt it. When he talked of love, he not
only thought that he was talking nonsense, but showed that he thought
so. From this fault he had already failed with one young lady reputed
to have L40,000, who had refused him because, as she naively said, she
knew 'he did not really care.' 'How can I show that I care more than
by wishing to make you my wife?' he had asked. 'I don't know that you
can, but all the same you don't care,' she said. And so that young
lady escaped the pitfall. Now there was another young lady, to whom
the reader shall be introduced in time, whom Sir Felix was instigated
to pursue with unremitting diligence. Her wealth was not defined, as
had been the L40,000 of her predecessor, but was known to be very much
greater than that. It was, indeed, generally supposed to be
fathomless, bottomless, endless. It was said that in regard to money
for ordinary expenditure, money for houses, servants, horses, jewels,
and the like, one sum was the same as another to the father of this
young lady. He had great concerns;--concerns so great that the payment
of ten or twenty thousand pounds upon any trifle was the same thing to
him,--as to men who are comfortable in their circumstances it matters
little whether they pay sixpence or ninepence for their mutton chops.
Such a man may be ruined at any time; but there was no doubt that to
anyone marrying his daughter during the present season of his
outrageous prosperity he could give a very large fortune indeed. Lady
Carbury, who had known the rock on which he