ably play with his hundreds, though not able, like herself, to be
generous with thousands. He would, in fact, have been ashamed to own his
rotten financial condition, either to Nan or to any of his social or
political friends; and he fancied that he was concealing this condition
in a very ingenious manner when he made a liberal outlay in connection
with their quiet marriage, the honeymoon abroad, and the subsequent
arrangements of their household in London.

This was all the more unfortunate because Nan, just of age, with her
fortune in her own hands, would have given him anything without demur or
question, if she had for a moment suspected that he needed it. His
concealment was so effectual that it never entered her unsophisticated
mind that this barrister in good practice, this rising politician, who
seemed to have his feet on the ladder of success, could be crushed and
burdened with debt. Sydney, however, was by no means blind. He knew well
enough that he could have had the few thousands necessary to clear him
if he had asked his wife for a cheque; but he did not trust her love
sufficiently to believe that she would think as well of him from that
day forward as she had done before, and he was not large-minded enough
to conceive himself as ever shaking off the sense of obligation which
her gift in such a form would impose upon him.

He had therefore drifted, in the matter of his debts, from expedient to
expedient, in the hope that by good fortune and good management he might
avoid the rocks that beset his course, and reach smooth water by his own
exertion. But, as ill luck would have it, he had given a bill for six
hundred pounds, due on the 23rd of November, to a certain Mr. Copley, a
man who had been especially disgusted by Sydney's failure to obtain
ready money at the time of his marriage, and who for this and other
reasons had worked himself up into a malicious frame of mind. But on the
23rd of November, Sydney and his wife had run over to Paris for a few
days with Sir John and Lady Pynsent, and then Nan had been so seriously
indisposed that Sydney could not leave her without seeming unkindness;
so that they did not reach London again until the 26th. This delay
opened a chapter of incidents which ended as Sydney had not foreseen.

He had not forgotten the date of the bill, and knew that it was
important to provide for it; but he did not anticipate that the last day
of grace would have expired before he could comm