was a sinful one. Do
you know the rest?"

"No," she faltered.

"He said he would give me to the end of the year. And if I were then
still pursuing my present frivolous course of life, doing no good to
myself or to anyone else, he should cancel the engagement. My darling,
I see how this pains you."

She was suppressing her tears with difficulty. "Papa will be sure to keep
his word, Percival. He is so resolute when he thinks he is right."

"The worst is, it's true. I do fall into all sorts of scrapes, and I have
got out of money, and I do idle my time away," acknowledged the young man
in his candour. "And all the while, Anne, I am thinking and hoping to do
right. If ever I get set on my legs again, _won't_ I keep on them!"

"But how many times have you said so before!" she whispered.

"Half the follies for which I am now paying were committed when I was but
a boy," he said. "One of the men now visiting here, Dawkes, persuaded me
to put my name to a bill for him for fifteen hundred pounds, and I had to
pay it. It hampered me for years; and in the end I know I must have paid
it twice over. I might have pleaded that I was under age when he got my
signature, but it would have been scarcely honourable to do so."

"And you never profited by the transaction?"

"Never by a sixpence. It was done for Dawkes's accommodation, not mine.
He ought to have paid it, you say? My dear, he is a man of straw, and
never had fifteen hundred pounds of his own in his life."

"Does Lord Hartledon know of this? I wonder he has him here."

"I did not mention it at the time; and the thing's past and done with. I
only tell you now to give you an idea of the nature of my embarrassments
and scrapes. Not one in ten has really been incurred for myself: they
only fall upon me. One must buy experience."

Terribly vexed was that sweet face, an almost painful sadness upon the
generally sunny features.

"I will never give you up, Anne," he continued, with emotion. "I told the
doctor so. I would rather give up life. And you know that your love is
mine."

"But my duty is theirs. And if it came to a contest--Oh, Percival! you
know, you know which would have to give place. Papa is so resolute in
right."

"It's a shame that fortune should be so unequally divided!" cried the
young man, resentfully. "Here's Edward with an income of thirty thousand
a year, and I, his own brother, only a year or two younger, can't boast a
fourth part as many hundreds!"