er or worse.

If Clive was gloomy and discontented even when the honeymoon had scarce
waned, what was the young man's condition in poverty, when they had no
love along with a silent dinner of herbs; when his mother-in-law grudged
each morsel which his poor old father ate--when a vulgar, coarse-minded
woman--as Mrs. Mackenzie was--pursued with brutal sarcasm one of the
tenderest and noblest gentlemen in the world; when an ailing wife,
always under some one's domination, received him with helpless
hysterical cries and reproaches!

For a ghastly bankruptcy overwhelmed the Bundeleund Bank, and with its
failure went all Colonel Newcome's savings, and all Mrs. Mackenzie's
money and her daughter's. Even the Colonel's pension and annuities were
swallowed up in the general ruin, for the old man would pay every
shilling of his debts.

When I ventured to ask the Colonel why Mrs. Mackenzie should continue to
live with them--"She has a right to live in the house," he said, "it is
I who have no right in it. I am a poor old pensioner, don't you see,
subsisting on Rosey's bounty. We live on the hundred a year secured to
her at her marriage, and Mrs. Mackenzie has her forty pounds of pension
which she adds to the common stock. They put their little means
together, and they keep us--me and Clive. What can we do for a living?
Great God! What can we do?"

But Clive was getting on tolerably well, at his painting, and many
sitters came to him from amongst his old friends; he had work, scantily
paid it is true, but work sufficient. "I am pretty easy in my mind,
since I have become acquainted with a virtuous dealer," the painter
assured me one day. "I sell myself to him, body and soul, for some half
dozen pounds a week. I know I can get my money, and he is regularly
supplied with his pictures. But for Rosey's illness we might carry on
well enough."

Rosey's illness? I was sorry to hear of that; and poor Clive, entering
into particulars, told me how he had spent upon doctors rather more than
a fourth of his year's earnings.

_IV.--The Colonel Says "Adsum" When His Name is Called_

Mention has been made of the Grey Friars school--where the Colonel and
Clive and I had been brought up, an ancient foundation still subsisting
at Smithfield.

On the 12th of December, the Founder's Day, a goodly company of old
Cistercians is generally brought together, to hear a sermon in chapel;
after which we adjourn to a great dinner, where old condis