mean to
put you out of conceit with it."

"It will do very well for me," said Eames. "I never was very
particular." And so they parted, Eames assuming the beautiful
arm-chair and the peril of being asked to carry Sir Raffle's shoes,
while FitzHoward took the vacant desk in the big room till such time
as some member of his family should come into Parliament for the
borough of St. Bungay.

But Eames, though he drank the porter, and quizzed FitzHoward, and
gibed at Kissing, did not seat himself in his new arm-chair without
some serious thoughts. He was aware that his career in London had not
hitherto been one on which he could look back with self-respect. He
had lived with friends whom he did not esteem; he had been idle, and
sometimes worse than idle; and he had allowed himself to be hampered
by the pretended love of a woman for whom he had never felt any true
affection, and by whom he had been cozened out of various foolish
promises which even yet were hanging over his head. As he sat with
Sir Raffle's notes before him, he thought almost with horror of the
men and women in Burton Crescent. It was now about three years since
he had first known Cradell, and he shuddered as he remembered how
very poor a creature was he whom he had chosen for his bosom friend.
He could not make for himself those excuses which we can make
for him. He could not tell himself that he had been driven by
circumstances to choose a friend, before he had learned to know what
were the requisites for which he should look. He had lived on terms
of closest intimacy with this man for three years, and now his eyes
were opening themselves to the nature of his friend's character.
Cradell was in age three years his senior. "I won't drop him," he
said to himself; "but he is a poor creature." He thought, too, of the
Lupexes, of Miss Spruce, and of Mrs Roper, and tried to imagine what
Lily Dale would do if she found herself among such people. It would
be impossible that she should ever so find herself. He might as well
ask her to drink at the bar of a gin shop as to sit down in Mrs
Roper's drawing-room. If destiny had in store for him such good
fortune as that of calling Lily his own, it was necessary that he
should altogether alter his mode of life.

In truth his hobbledehoyhood was dropping off from him, as its old
skin drops from a snake. Much of the feeling and something of the
knowledge of manhood was coming on him, and he was beginning to
recognise to