e died, leaving him only one
child--a boy; and her death made him so melancholy that he could no
longer attend to his farm. He threw it up, invested the proceeds as a
capital, and lived on the interest as a gentleman at large. He travelled
over Europe for some time--chiefly on foot--came back, having recovered
his spirits--resumed his old desultory purposeless life at different
country-houses, and at one of those houses I and Charles Haughton met
him. Here I pause, to state that Willy Losely at that time impressed
me with the idea that he was a thoroughly honest man. Though he was
certainly no formalist--though he had lived with wild sets of convivial
scapegraces--though, out of sheer high spirits, he would now and then
make conventional Proprieties laugh at their own long faces; yet, I
should have said that Bayard himself--and Bayard was no saint--could not
have been more incapable of a disloyal, rascally, shabby action. Nay, in
the plain matter of integrity, his ideas might be called refined, almost
Quixotic. If asked to give or to lend, Willy's hand was in his pocket in
an instant; but though thrown among rich men--careless as himself--Willy
never put his hand into their pockets, never borrowed, never owed. He
would accept hospitality--make frank use of your table, your horses,
your dogs--but your money, no! He repaid all he took from a host by
rendering himself the pleasantest guest that host ever entertained. Poor
Willy! I think I see his quaint smile brimming over with sly sport! The
sound of his voice was like a cry of 'o-half-holiday' in a schoolroom.
He dishonest! I should as soon have suspected the noonday sun of being a
dark lantern! I remember, when he and I were walking home from wild-duck
shooting in advance of our companions, a short conversation between us
that touched me greatly, for it showed that, under all his levity, there
were sound sense and right feeling. I asked him about his son, then a
boy at school: 'Why, as it was the Christmas vacation, he had refused
our host's suggestion to let the lad come down there?' 'Ah,' said
he, 'don't fancy that I will lead my son to grow up a scatterbrained
good-for-nought like his father. His society is the joy of my life;
whenever I have enough in my pockets to afford myself that joy, I go
and hire a quiet lodging close by his school, to have him with me from
Saturday till Monday all to myself--where he never hears wild fellows
call me "Willy," and ask me to mimic