or himself not to
drink, gamble, squander his money, neglect his father, prove unfaithful
to his wife; that the innate capacity for blackguardism, which was as
strong in him as in any man, might, and probably would, run utterly riot
thenceforth. He felt as if he should cast away his last anchor, and
drift helplessly down into utter shame and ruin. It may have been very
fanciful: but so he felt; and felt it so strongly too, that in less time
than I have taken to write this he had turned to Mark Armsworth:--

"Sir, you are what I have always found you. Do you wish me to be what
you have always found me?"

"I'd be sorry to see you anything else, boy."

"Then, sir, I can't do this. In honour, I can't."

"Are you married already?" thundered Mark.

"Not quite as bad as that;" and in spite of his agitation Tom laughed,
but hysterically, at the notion. "But fool I am; for I am in love with
another woman. I am, sir," went he on hurriedly. "Boy that I am! and she
don't even know it: but if you be the man I take you for, you may be
angry with me, but you'll understand me. Anything but be a rogue to you
and to Mary, and to my own self too. Fool I'll be, but rogue I won't!"

Mark strode on in silence, frightfully red in the face for full five
minutes. Then he turned sharply on Tom, and catching him by the
shoulder, thrust him from him.

"There,--go! and don't let me see or hear of you; that is, till I tell
you! Go along, I say! Hum-hum!" (in a tone half of wrath, and half of
triumph), "his father's child! If you will ruin yourself, I can't help
it."

"Nor I, sir," said Tom, in a really piteous tone, bemoaning the day he
ever saw Aberalva, as he watched Mark stride into his own gate. "If I
had but had common luck! If I had but brought my L1500 safe home here,
and never seen Grace, and married this girl out of hand! Common luck is
all I ask, and I never get it!"

And Tom went home sulkier than a bear: but he did not let his father
find out his trouble. It was his last evening with the old man.
To-morrow he must go to London, and then--to scramble and twist about
the world again till he died! "Well, why not? A man must die somehow:
but it's hard on the poor old father," said Tom.

As Tom was packing his scanty carpet-bag next morning, there was a knock
at the door. He looked out, and saw Armsworth's clerk. What could that
mean? Had the old man determined to avenge the slight, and to do so on
his father, by claiming some old