er thoughts crowded upon him. How would
this new life suit him? He must have a new house, and new ways; must
live under a new dominion, and fit himself to new pleasures. And what
was he to gain by it? Lady Carbury was a handsome woman, and he liked
her beauty. He regarded her too as a clever woman; and, because she
had flattered him, he had liked her conversation. He had been long
enough about town to have known better,--and as he now walked along the
streets, he almost felt that he ought to have known better. Every now
and again he warmed himself a little with the remembrance of her
beauty, and told himself that his new home would be pleasanter, though
it might perhaps be less free, than the old one. He tried to make the
best of it; but as he did so was always repressed by the memory of the
appearance of that drunken young baronet.

Whether for good or for evil, the step had been taken and the thing
was done. It did not occur to him that the lady would refuse him. All
his experience of the world was against such refusal. Towns which
consider, always render themselves. Ladies who doubt always solve
their doubts in the one direction. Of course she would accept him;--and
of course he would stand to his guns. As he went to his work he
endeavoured to bathe himself in self-complacency; but, at the bottom
of it, there was a substratum of melancholy which leavened his
prospects.

Lady Carbury went from the door of her son's room to her own chamber,
and there sat thinking through the greater part of the night. During
these hours she perhaps became a better woman, as being more oblivious
of herself, than she had been for many a year. It could not be for the
good of this man that he should marry her,--and she did in the midst of
her many troubles try to think of the man's condition. Although in the
moments of her triumph,--and such moments were many,--she would buoy
herself up with assurances that her Felix would become a rich man,
brilliant with wealth and rank, an honour to her, a personage whose
society would be desired by many, still in her heart of hearts she
knew how great was the peril, and in her imagination she could foresee
the nature of the catastrophe which might come. He would go utterly to
the dogs and would take her with him. And whithersoever he might go,
to what lowest canine regions he might descend, she knew herself well
enough to be sure that whether married or single she would go with
him. Though her reason