and I will therefore make no promise. A man should fetter
himself by no assurances of that kind as to his conduct. If a man
be a drunkard, it may be well that he should bind himself by a vow
against drinking. But he who can rule his own conduct should promise
nothing. Good-day now. I must be back to dinner with my mother."

Then he took his leave somewhat abruptly, and returned. Hampstead
went on to Hendon with his thoughts sometimes fixed on his sister,
sometimes on Roden, whom he regarded as impracticable, sometimes
on that horrid Crocker;--but more generally on Marion Fay, whom he
resolved that he must see again, whatever might be the difficulties
in his way.

CHAPTER XVII.

LORD HAMPSTEAD'S SCHEME.

During the following week Hampstead went down to Gorse Hall, and
hunted two or three days with various packs of hounds within his
reach, declaring to himself that, after all, Leicestershire was
better than Cumberland, because he was known there, and no one
would dare to treat him as Crocker had done. Never before had his
democratic spirit received such a shock,--or rather the remnant of
that aristocratic spirit which he had striven to quell by the wisdom
and humanity of democracy! That a stranger should have dared to talk
to him about one of the ladies of his family! No man certainly would
do so in Northamptonshire or Leicestershire. He could not quite
explain to himself the difference in the localities, but he was quite
sure that he was safe from anything of that kind at Gorse Hall.

But he had other matters to think of as he galloped about the
country. How might he best manage to see Marion Fay? His mind was
set upon that;--or, perhaps, more dangerously still, his heart. Had
he been asked before he would have said that there could have been
nothing more easy than for such a one as he to make acquaintance with
a young lady in Paradise Row. But now, when he came to look at it,
he found that Marion Fay was environed with fortifications and a
_chevaux-de-frise_ of difficulties which were apparently impregnable.
He could not call at No. 17, and simply ask for Miss Fay. To do
so he must be a proficient in that impudence, the lack of which
created so many difficulties for him. He thought of finding out
the Quaker chapel in the City, and there sitting out the whole
proceeding,--unless desired to leave the place,--with the Quixotic
idea of returning to Holloway with her in an omnibus. As he looked at
this projec