age; amongst them, perhaps,
the most dangerous were,--firstly, carelessness in money matters;
secondly, a distaste for advice in which prudence was visibly
predominant. His tastes were not in reality extravagant: but money
slipped through his hands, leaving little to show for it; and when
his quarterly allowance became due, ample though it was,--too ample,
perhaps,--debts wholly forgotten started up to seize hold of it. And
debts as yet being manageable were not regarded with sufficient horror.
Paid or put aside, as the case might be, they were merely looked upon as
bores. Youth is in danger till it learn to look upon them as furies. For
advice, he took it with pleasure, when clothed with elegance and art,
when it addressed ambition, when it exalted the loftier virtues. But
advice, practical and prosy, went in at one ear and out at the other. In
fact, with many talents, he had yet no adequate ballast of common-sense;
and if ever he get enough to steady his bark through life's trying
voyage, the necessity of so much dull weight must be forcibly stricken
home less to his reason than his imagination or his heart. But if,
somehow or other, he get it not, I will not insure his vessel.

I know not if Lionel Haughton had genius; he never assumed that he had:
but he had something more like genius than that prototype, RESOLVE, of
which he boasted to the artist. He had YOUTH,--real youth,--youth of
mind, youth of heart, youth of soul. Lithe and supple as he moved before
you, with the eye to which light or dew sprang at once from a nature
vibrating to every lofty, every tender thought, he seemed more than
young,--the incarnation of youth.

Darrell took to him at once. Amidst all the engagements crowded on
the important man, he contrived to see Lionel daily. And what may seem
strange, Guy Darrell felt more at home with Lionel Haughton than with
any of his own contemporaries,--than even with Alban Morley. To the
last, indeed, he opened speech with less reserve of certain portions of
the past, or of certain projects in the future. But still, even there,
he adopted a tone of half-playful, half-mournful satire, which might be
in itself disguise. Alban Morley, with all his good qualities, was a man
of the world; as a man of the world, Guy Darrell talked to him. But it
was only a very small part of Guy Darrell the Man, of which the world
could say "mine."

To Lionel he let out, as if involuntarily, the more amiable, tender,
poetic att