e staked everything on
success; consequently, he forfeited pity.

Good-bye to ambition, I thought, and ate heartily, considering robustly
the while how far lower than the general level I might avoid falling.
The report of the debates in morning papers--doubtless, more flowing
and, perhaps, more grammatical than such as I gave ear to overnight--had
the odd effect on me of relieving me from the fit of subserviency into
which the speakers had sunk me.

A conceit of towering superiority took its place, and as Etherell was
kind enough to draw me out and compliment me, I was attacked by a tragic
sense of contrast between my capacities and my probable fortunes. It was
open to me to marry Janet. But this meant the loosening of myself with
my own hand for ever from her who was my mentor and my glory, to gain
whom I was in the very tideway. I could not submit to it, though the
view was like that of a green field of the springs passed by a climber
up the crags. I went to Anna Penrhys to hear a woman's voice, and
partly told her of my troubles. She had heard Mr. Hipperdon express his
confident opinion that he should oust me from my seat. Her indignation
was at my service as a loan: it sprang up fiercely and spontaneously in
allusions to something relating to my father, of which the Marquis of
Edbury had been guilty. 'How you can bear it!' she exclaimed, for I was
not wordy. The exclamation, however, stung me to put pen to paper--the
woman was not so remote in me as not to be roused by the woman. I wrote
to Edbury, and to Heriot, bidding him call on the young nobleman. Late
at night I was at my father's door to perform the act of duty of seeing
him, and hearing how he had entertained Eckart, if he was still master
of his liberty. I should have known him better: I expected silence and
gloom. The windows were lighted brilliantly. As the hall-door opened, a
band of stringed and wood instruments commenced an overture. Mrs. Waddy
came to me in the hall; she was unintelligible. One thing had happened
to him at one hour of the morning, and another at another hour. He was
at one moment suffering the hands of the 'officers' on his shoulder:

'And behold you, Mr. Harry! a knock, a letter from a messenger, and he
conquers Government!' It struck me that the epitome of his life had been
played in a day: I was quite incredulous of downright good fortune.
He had been giving a dinner followed by a concert, and the deafening
strains of the music c