a sleepy, indolent expression
of the eye, certain hard lines about the angles of the mouth, betokened
one who played a high game with life, and rarely arose a winner.
Although his whole appearance bespoke birth and blood rather than
intellect or ability, there was enough in his high and squarely shaped
head, his deep dark eye, and his firm, sharply cut mouth, to augur that
incapacity could not be reckoned among the causes of any failures he
incurred in his career. He was, in every respect, the _beau ideal_
of that strange solecism in our social code, "the younger son." His
brother, the Duke of Derwent, had eighty thousand a year. _He_ had
exactly three hundred. His Grace owned three houses, which might well
be called palaces, besides a grouse lodge in the Highlands, a yachting
station at Cowes, and a villa at Hyeres in France. My Lord was but too
happy to be the possessor of the three cobwebbed chambers of a viceregal
aide-decamp, and enjoy the pay of his troop without joining his
regiment.

Yet these two men were reared exactly alike! As much habituated to
every requirement and luxury of wealth as his elder brother, the younger
suddenly discovered that, once beyond the shadow of his father's house,
all his worldly resources were something more than what the cook, and
something less than the valet, received. He had been taught one valuable
lesson, however, which was, that as the State loves a rich aristocracy,
it burdens itself with the maintenance of all those who might prove a
drain on its resources, and that it is ever careful to provide for the
Lord Georges and Lord Charleses of its noble houses. To this provision
he believed he had a legal claim,--at all events, he knew it to be a
right uncontested by those less highly born.

The system which excludes men from the career of commerce, in
compensation opens the billiard-room, the whist-table, and the
betting-ring; and many a high capacity has been exercised in such
spheres as these, whose resources might have won honor and distinction
in very different fields of enterprise. Whether Lord Charles Frobisher
knew this, and felt that there was better in him, or whether his
successes were below his hopes, certain is it, he was a depressed,
dejected man, who lounged through life in a languid indolence, caring
for nothing, not even himself.

There was some story of an unfortunate attachment, some love affair with
a very beautiful but portionless cousin, who married a mar