sel on such an occasion as this? But to counsel Mr. Harvey Rolfe
was to be guilty of gross impertinence. With lofty spirit the young
gentleman proclaimed that he must no longer be treated as a school-boy!
Whereupon the Doctor lost his temper, and spoke with a particularly
strong Hibernian accent--spoke words which to this moment stung the
hearer's memory. He saw himself marching from the room--that room
yonder, on the ground-floor. It was some small consolation to remember
that he had been drinking steadily for a week before that happened.
Indeed, he could recall no scene quite so discreditable throughout the
course of his insensate youth.

Well, he had something like two thousand pounds. Whether he had looked
for more or less he hardly knew, or whether he had looked for anything
at all. At one-and-twenty he was the merest child in matters of the
world. Surely something must have arrested the natural development of
his common-sense. Even in another ten years he was scarcely on a level,
as regards practical intelligence, with the ordinary lad who is leaving
school.

He at once threw up his medical studies, which had grown hateful to
him. He took his first taste of foreign travel. He extended his reading
and his knowledge of languages. And insensibly a couple of years went
by.

The possession of money had done him good. It clarified his passions,
or tended that way. A self-respect, which differed appreciably from
what he had formerly understood by that term, began to guard him
against grossness; together with it there developed in him a new social
pride which made him desire the acquaintance of well-bred people.
Though he had no longer any communication with the good old Doctor, Amy
frequently wrote to him, and in one of her letters she begged him to
call on a family in London, one of whose younger members lived at
Greystone and was Amy's friend. After much delay, he overcame his
bashfulness, and called upon the worthy people--tailored as became a
gentleman at large. The acquaintance led to others; in a short time he
was on pleasant terms with several well-to-do families. He might have
suspected--but at the time, of course, did not--that Dr Harvey's kindly
influence had something to do with his reception in these houses.
Self-centred, but painfully self-distrustful, he struggled to overcome
his natural defects of manner. Possibly with some success; for did not
Lily Burton, who at first so piqued him by her critical smi