ame me for that; but you have no right to pitch into
me about these debts."

The effect upon a stupid man not unjustly incensed need scarcely be
described. For a while Singleton raved.

"I'll tell you what, father," said Norris at last, "I don't think this
is going to do. I think you had better let me take to painting. It's the
only thing I take a spark of interest in. I shall never be steady as
long as I'm at anything else."

"When you stand here, sir, to the neck in disgrace," said the father, "I
should have hoped you would have had more good taste than to repeat this
levity."

The hint was taken; the levity was never more obtruded on the father's
notice, and Norris was inexorably launched upon a backward voyage. He
went abroad to study foreign languages, which he learned, at a very
expensive rate; and a fresh crop of debts fell soon to be paid, with
similar lamentations, which were in this case perfectly justified, and
to which Norris paid no regard. He had been unfairly treated over the
Oxford affair; and with a spice of malice very surprising in one so
placable, and an obstinacy remarkable in one so weak, refused from that
day forward to exercise the least captaincy on his expenses. He wasted
what he would; he allowed his servants to despoil him at their
pleasure; he sowed insolvency; and, when the crop was ripe, notified his
father with exasperating calm. His own capital was put in his hands, he
was planted in the diplomatic service, and told he must depend upon
himself.

He did so till he was twenty-five, by which time he had spent his money,
laid in a handsome choice of debts and acquired (like so many other
melancholic and uninterested persons) a habit of gambling. An Austrian
colonel--the same who afterwards hanged himself at Monte Carlo--gave him
a lesson which lasted two-and-twenty hours, and left him wrecked and
helpless. Old Singleton once more repurchased the honour of his name,
this time at a fancy figure; and Norris was set afloat again on stern
conditions. An allowance of three hundred pounds in the year was to be
paid to him quarterly by a lawyer in Sydney, New South Wales. He was not
to write. Should he fail on any quarter-day to be in Sydney, he was to
be held for dead, and the allowance tacitly withdrawn. Should he return
to Europe, an advertisement publicly disowning him was to appear in
every paper of repute.

It was one of his most annoying features as a son that he was always
polite, al