owed him the dim basilica as if it belonged to
them. Pemberton noted how much less, among its curiosities, Lord
Dorrington carried himself as a man of the world; wondering too whether,
for such services, his companions took a fee from him. The autumn at any
rate waned, the Dorringtons departed, and Lord Verschoyle, the eldest
son, had proposed neither for Amy nor for Paula.

One sad November day, while the wind roared round the old palace and the
rain lashed the lagoon, Pemberton, for exercise and even somewhat for
warmth--the Moreens were horribly frugal about fires; it was a cause of
suffering to their inmate--walked up and down the big bare sala with his
pupil. The scagliola floor was cold, the high battered casements shook
in the storm, and the stately decay of the place was unrelieved by a
particle of furniture. Pemberton's spirits were low, and it came over
him that the fortune of the Moreens was now even lower. A blast of
desolation, a portent of disgrace and disaster, seemed to draw through
the comfortless hall. Mr. Moreen and Ulick were in the Piazza, looking
out for something, strolling drearily, in mackintoshes, under the
arcades; but still, in spite of mackintoshes, unmistakeable men of the
world. Paula and Amy were in bed--it might have been thought they were
staying there to keep warm. Pemberton looked askance at the boy at his
side, to see to what extent he was conscious of these dark omens. But
Morgan, luckily for him, was now mainly conscious of growing taller and
stronger and indeed of being in his fifteenth year. This fact was
intensely interesting to him and the basis of a private theory--which,
however, he had imparted to his tutor--that in a little while he should
stand on his own feet. He considered that the situation would
change--that in short he should be "finished," grown up, producible in
the world of affairs and ready to prove himself of sterling ability.
Sharply as he was capable at times of analysing, as he called it, his
life, there were happy hours when he remained, as he also called it--and
as the name, really, of their right ideal--"jolly" superficial; the proof
of which was his fundamental assumption that he should presently go to
Oxford, to Pemberton's college, and, aided and abetted by Pemberton, do
the most wonderful things. It depressed the young man to see how little
in such a project he took account of ways and means: in other connexions
he mostly kept to the measure.