sures,
dashed only with such disappointments as loss at play inflicted, or some
project of intrigue baffled or averted.

"If that boy of Norcott's isn't a scamp, he must be a most unteachable
young rascal," said an old colonel once to Eccles on the croquet ground.

"He has had great opportunities," said Eccles, as he sent off his ball,
"and, so far as I see, neglected none of them."

"You were his tutor, I think?" said the other, with a laugh.

"Yes, till Madame Cleremont took my place."

"I 'll not say it was the worst thing could have happened him. I wish
it had been a woman had spoiled _me_. Eh, Eccles, possibly you may have
some such misgivings yourself?"

"I was never corrupted," said the other, with a sententious gravity
whose hypocrisy was palpable.

I meditated many and many a time over these few words, and they
suggested to me the first attempt I ever made to know something about
myself and my own nature.

Those stories of Balzac's, those wonderful pictures of passionate life,
acquired an immense hold upon me, from the very character of my own
existence. That terrific game of temper against temper, mind against
mind, and heart against heart, of which I read in these novels, I was
daily witnessing in what went on around me, and I amused myself by
giving the names of the characters in these fictions to the various
persons of our society.

"It is a very naughty little world we live in at this house, Digby,"
said Madame to me one day; "but you'd be surprised to find what a very
vulgar thing is the life of people in general, and that if you want the
sensational, or even the pictorial in existence, you 'll have to pay for
it in some compromise of principle."

"I know mamma wouldn't like to live here," said I, half sullenly.

"Oh, mamma!" cried she, with a laugh, and then suddenly checking
herself: "No, Digby, you are quite right. Mamma would be shocked at our
doings; not that they are so very wicked in themselves as that, to one
of her quiet ways, they would seem so."

"Mamma is very good. I never knew any one like her," stammered I out.

"That's quite true, my dear boy. She is all that you say, but one may
be too good, just as he may be too generous or too confiding; and it is
well to remember that there are a number of excellent things one would
like to be if they could afford them; but the truth is, Digby, the most
costly of all things are virtues."

"Oh, do not say that!" cried I, eagerly.

"Ye