the one friend,
you catch hold of another--the bill is renewed, premium and interest
thrown into the next pay-day--soon the account multiplies, and with it
the honour dwindles--your NAME circulates from hand to hand on the back
of doubtful paper--your name, which, in all money transactions, should
grow higher and higher each year you live, falling down every month
like the shares in a swindling speculation. You begin by what you call
trusting a friend, that is, aiding him to self-destruction--buying him
arsenic to clear his complexion--you end by dragging all near you into
your own abyss, as a drowning man would clutch at his own brother.
Lionel Haughton, the saddest expression I ever saw in your father's face
was when--when--but you shall hear the story--"

"No, sir; spare me. Since you so insist on it, I will give the
promise--it is enough; and my father--"

"Was as honourable as you when he first signed his name to a friend's
bill; and, perhaps, promised to do so no more as reluctantly as you do.
You had better let me say on; if I stop now, you will forget all about
it by this day twelve-month; if I go on, you will never forget. There
are other examples besides your father; I am about to name one."

Lionel resigned himself to the operation, throwing his handkerchief over
his face as if he had taken chloroform. "When I was young," resumed the
Colonel, "I chanced to make acquaintance with a man of infinite whim and
humour; fascinating as Darrell himself, though in a very different way.
We called him Willy--you know the kind of man one calls by his Christian
name, cordially abbreviated--that kind of man seems never to be quite
grown up; and, therefore, never rises in life. I never knew a man called
Willy after the age of thirty, who did not come to a melancholy end!
Willy was the natural son of a rich, helter-skelter, cleverish, maddish,
stylish, raffish, four-in-hand Baronet, by a celebrated French actress.
The title is extinct now, and so, I believe, is that genus of stylish,
raffish, four-in-hand Baronet--Sir Julian Losely--"

"Losely!" echoed Lionel. "Yes; do you know the name?"

"I never heard it till yesterday. I want to tell you what I did hear
then--but after your story--go on."

"Sir Julian Losely (Willy's father) lived with the French lady as his
wife, and reared Willy in his house, with as much pride and fondness as
if he intended him for his heir. The poor boy, I suspect, got but little
regular educat