character before me--one of whom I hesitate not to say
that only the name is derived from invention. Some may have already
identified him; many more may surmise the individual meant. It is enough
that I say he still lives, and the correctness of the portrait may
easily be tested by any traveller Rhinewards; but I prefer giving him a
chapter to himself.

CHAPTER XXVI. SIR HARRY WYCHERLEY

Sir Harry Wycherley was of an old Hampshire family, who, entering the
army when a mere boy, contrived, before he came of age, so completely
to encumber a very large estate that his majority only enabled him to
finish the ruin he had so actively begun, and to leave him penniless
at seven-and-twenty. Before the wreck of his property became matter of
notoriety, he married an earl's daughter with a vast fortune, a portion
of which was settled on any children that might be born to their union.
She, poor girl, scarcely nineteen when she married (for it was a love
match), died of a broken heart at three-and-twenty--leaving Sir
Harry, with two infant children, all but irretrievably ruined, nearly
everything he possessed mortgaged beyond its value, and not even a house
to shelter him. By the advice of his lawyer, he left England secretly
and came over to Paris, whence he travelled through Germany down to
Italy, where he resided some time. The interest of the fortune settled
on the children sufficed to maintain him in good style, and enabled him
to associate with men of his own rank, provided he incurred no habits
of extravagance. A few years of such prudence would, he was told, enable
him to return with a moderate income; and he submitted.

This career of quiet, unobtrusive character was gradually becoming more
and more insupportable to him. At first the change from a life beset by
duns and bailiffs, by daily interviews with Jews and consultations with
scheming lawyers, was happiness itself; the freedom he enjoyed from
pressing difficulties and contingencies which arose with every hour was
a pleasure he never knew before, and he felt like a schoolboy escaped
from the drudgery of the desk. But by degrees, as he mixed more with
those who were his former associates and companions--many of them exiles
on the same plea as himself--the old taste for past pleasures revived.
Their conversation brought back London with all its brilliant gaiety
before him. Its clubs and coteries, the luxurious display of the
dinners at the 'Clarendon' or the reck