to
Sydney's habit of referring every question to the test of personal
expediency. It was her first great disillusion, but the pain which it
caused her was on her parents' behalf rather than on her own. They were
the chief sufferers; they gave him so much and received so little in
return. To be sure, Sydney was only what they had made him. They bade
him "take," in language which he could easily understand, but their
craving for love, for tenderness, for a share in his hopes, ambitions,
resolutions, and triumphs, found no entrance to his understanding.

Sydney had spent a large sum of money at Cambridge, and had left heavy
debts behind him, although his father had paid without remonstrance all
the accounts which he suffered to reach the old man's hands. He had what
are called expensive tastes; in other words, he bought what he coveted,
and did not count the cost. The same thing went on in London, and Mr.
Campion soon found that his income, good as it was, fell short of the
demands which were made upon it.

The rector himself had always been a free spender. His books, his
pictures, his garden, his mania for curiosities, had run away with
thousands of pounds, and now, when he surreptitiously tried to convert
these things into cash again there was a woeful falling off in their
value. He knew nothing of the art of driving a bargain; and, where
others would have made a profit with the same opportunities, he
invariably lost money. He had bought badly to begin with, and he sold
disastrously. Being hard pressed on one occasion for a hundred pounds to
send to Sydney, he borrowed it of a perfect stranger, who took for his
security what would have sufficed to cover ten times the amount.

This was in the third year after Sydney was called to the bar. Lettice
was in London that autumn, on a visit to the Grahams; and perhaps
something which she contrived to say to her brother induced him to write
and tell his father that briefs were coming in at last, and that he
hoped to be able to dispense with further remittances from home. Mr.
Campion rejoiced in this assurance as though it implied that Sydney had
made his fortune. But things had gone too far with him to admit of
recovery, even if the young man had kept to his good resolutions--which
he did not.

The fact is that Sydney's college debts hung like a weight round his
neck, and he had made no effort to be rid of them. The income of his
fellowship and his professional earnings ought