ed to attend, and he was a good young man. He wanted to spend
money and to infuriate his trustees, but he did not know how to do it.
Women bored him. He had a yacht, but loathed it, and kept it in
harbour, and only spent on it enough money to keep it from rusting
away. He maintained a stable, but would not bet or attend any other
meeting than Ascot. He had some taste in art, but only cared for
modern pictures, which he could buy for fifty or a hundred pounds.
Indeed he was much too nice for his altogether exceptional
opportunities for wasting money, for he loathed vulgarity, and the only
people who could tell him how to waste his wealth--stable-touts,
art-dealers, women of the West End--were essentially vulgar, and he
could not endure their society.... He had five houses, but all he
needed was an apartment of three rooms, and he was haunted and made
miserable by the idea, not without a fairly solid foundation, that
young women and their mammas wished to marry him for his money.... He
longed to know a young woman who had no mamma, but none ever came his
way. Society was full of mammas, and of ladies eager to push the
fortunes of their husbands and lovers. He was turned to as a man of
power, but in his heart he knew that no human being was ever more
helpless, more miserably at the mercy of his trustees, agents, and
servants.... He had been approached many times by persons interested
in plays, theatres, and schemes, but being that rare and unhappy
creature, a rich man with good taste, he had avoided them as hotly as
the mammas of Mayfair and Belgravia.

He met Charles at his exhibition and was introduced to him. Charles at
once bellowed at him at the top of his voice on the great things that
would be achieved through the realisation of his dreams, and Lord
Verschoyle had in his society the exhilarated sense of playing truant,
and wanted more of it. He was hotly pursued at the moment by Lady
Tremenheer, who had two daughters, and he longed ardently to disgrace
himself, but so perfect was his taste that he could not do it--in the
ordinary way. Charles was outrageous, but so famous as to carry it
off, and Verschoyle seized upon the great artist as the way of escape,
well knowing that art ranked with dissipation in the opinion of his
trustees. With one stone he could kill all his birds. He promised by
letter, being most careful to get his wicked indiscretion down in
writing, his whole-hearted support of Charles's