new nothing about
politics or any serious matters, and were principally interested in the
study of their inner consciousness as affected by man; whereas I was
perpetually taking issue with him on questions of government policy and
pauperism, driving him into holes in regard to the value of an
hereditary nobility and the dis-establishment of the English Church.
Women at home were not like that, he said. The men told them what to
believe, and they stuck to it through thick and thin; but voluntary
feminine ratiocination was the rarest thing in the world among his
countrywomen. As for himself, he was a conservative,--a conservative
without money. Money was all he needed to build up the splendid estates
of Clyde, which had been slowly decaying for this lack during two
generations. His chief ambition was to retouch and refurbish the broad
domain of his inheritance, so that its lordly manors, ivy-mantled
abbeys, and green meadows might know again the peace, poetry, and
prosperity of an ideal English home. There would then for the lord of
Clyde be happiness and romance equalled by none on earth. For, eager to
benefit his fellow-men, he would have within the radius of his own
estate a hundred cabins to call in play his invention or humanity; and
with one's conscience at rest, he said, could there be a purer joy than
to wander with her of one's choice under the ancestral elms of old
England, with the September moon o'erhead?

This was the Honorable Ernest's dream; but to realize it, he must make
money. He had come to the States, so he told me when we grew more
intimate, in order to seek it. There were great chances in the far West
for a shrewd man with a little capital, and to find some investment that
promised large returns was the real object of his journey thither.
Already, even since his arrival in New York, he had done extremely
well. There was a smart (so he had heard him called) young fellow who
had put him into several profitable speculations: very likely I might
know him,--Roger Dale was his name; every one said he had made a lot of
money, and was one of the coming men of Wall Street. I was kindly to
consider this as a confidence, for he did not care to have it noised
about that he was other than an idler here.

The Honorable Ernest Ferroll's attentions, as I have implied, grew apace
from the evening of our introduction, and soon attracted remark. There
was an instant recognition of the fitness of the match even from
t