fter such unnatural conduct?

So again I have heard of an old dowager countess whose money was all in
Consols; she had had many sons, and in her anxiety to give the younger
ones a good start, wanted a larger income than Consols would give her.
She consulted her solicitor and was advised to sell her Consols and
invest in the London and North-Western Railway, then at about 85. This
was to her what eating snails was to the poor widow whose story I have
told above. With shame and grief, as of one doing an unclean thing--but
her boys must have their start--she did as she was advised. Then for a
long while she could not sleep at night and was haunted by a presage of
disaster. Yet what happened? She started her boys, and in a few years
found her capital doubled into the bargain, on which she sold out and
went back again to Consols and died in the full blessedness of
fund-holding.

She thought, indeed, that she was doing a wrong and dangerous thing, but
this had absolutely nothing to do with it. Suppose she had invested in
the full confidence of a recommendation by some eminent London banker
whose advice was bad, and so had lost all her money, and suppose she had
done this with a light heart and with no conviction of sin--would her
innocence of evil purpose and the excellence of her motive have stood her
in any stead? Not they.

But to return to my story. Towneley gave my hero most trouble. Towneley,
as I have said, knew that Ernest would have money soon, but Ernest did
not of course know that he knew it. Towneley was rich himself, and was
married now; Ernest would be rich soon, had _bona fide_ intended to be
married already, and would doubtless marry a lawful wife later on. Such
a man was worth taking pains with, and when Towneley one day met Ernest
in the street, and Ernest tried to avoid him, Towneley would not have it,
but with his usual quick good nature read his thoughts, caught him,
morally speaking, by the scruff of his neck, and turned him laughingly
inside out, telling him he would have no such nonsense.

Towneley was just as much Ernest's idol now as he had ever been, and
Ernest, who was very easily touched, felt more gratefully and warmly than
ever towards him, but there was an unconscious something which was
stronger than Towneley, and made my hero determine to break with him more
determinedly perhaps than with any other living person; he thanked him in
a low hurried voice and pressed his hand, while