of a fifty miles' journey, to Mr. Oatway's
house at Exeter; where all that the most
tender anxiety for my health and peace of
mind could suggest was put into operation by
his daughter Clara; whom in her infancy
and girlhood I had regarded as a sister; but
who more recently I had hoped would one day
consent to become my wife. Here I remained
nearly a twelvemonth. But, in proportion as
my bodily health improved, my mental
malady increased. Mr. Oatway concluded
that my mother's death was the cause of the
depression that weighed me down; but when
he found that neither time nor the influences
of religion availed to assuage the anguish and
bitterness of my spirit, he was sometimes
betrayed into impatient surprise.

At Cambridge, where I went, I was
accounted a strangely miserable man. Few
sought my acquaintance, and fewer still were
tempted to cultivate it. Neither did I
distinguish myself. I was a diligent student
indeed, but not of books that lead to the
acquisition of university honours. I gave my
Alma Mater no reason to be proud of me.

Shortly after my departure from Westwood
House for Exeter, I had received a
letter from Garston, who was then in Italy.
There were two pieces of intelligence
contained in it that affected and agitated me.
He informed me that he had given
instructions to his solicitor to cause the
property my mother had left him to be turned
into money, and to pay it over to me so soon
as I came of age. "For," he continued, "I
do not wish Mr. Meredith to have any part
in this affair. He insulted me once or twice
very coarsely during your mother's last illness,
and I do not value the man highly
enough to wish to regain any good opinion
he may once have entertained of me, and
which I never justly forfeited." He then
told me that he had commissioned an artist,
just risen into fame, being second only to
Canova among Italian sculptors, to execute
a tablet in memory of my mother, which
he desired should be placed in the church of
Battenham. "This memorial will be all
that a fervid poetical genius, chastened by
religion, can make it," he wrote.

About a year afterwards, Meredith and I
were standing before this tablet in the hall
of Westwood House. It had just arrived
from Italy. With no ample space for the
exercise of taste or the exhibition of genius,
the sculptor had displayed both with
uncommon skill and effect. We admired the
composition: Meredith as truly as I, although
grudgingly; and he was greatly pleased, and
a little surprised, when I observed that it was
not my intention to have it placed in the
church.

"I thought you had taken a fancy to the
man," he remarked; "you were so
constantly with him."

"And I have found my account in it,"
said I.

"How so?"

I could not resist telling him of Garston's
gift, which he most undoubtedly considered
an act of noble generosity. The lawyer was
lost in thought for several minutes.

"That Garston loved your mother most
deeply and sincerely (there was a dash of
adoration in his love, by the bye, most
unusual) I firmly believe. I took care to assure
myself of that. But—In short, the man is
crazy: he looked and acted like a man whose
wits are leaving him. This is some impulse.
He will think twice about it, and the two
thoughts will twine into one humbug. I
shall be curious to see your banker's book a
year-and-a-half hence."

Two years and a half passed away, and
had Meredith inspected that book, he would
have seen no such sum as he sought for
entered to my credit.

I was not greatly surprised at this. If
Garston's gift had not been duly appreciated
by me at the time, the withholding of it
when I was older, and came to feel the
potency of those artificial needs which men
create for themselves, was no cause of
astonishment to me. I had heard, during my late
visit to London, that he played deeply; and
that, ever since my mother's death, he
had been pursuing a reckless and extravagant
course; that his elder brother was
dead, and that he expected, from month to
month, to succeed to his uncle's peerage.
My informant—one of his earliest and most
intimate friends—deplored the vices to which
he had abandoned himself, saying that his
early life gave promise of worthier things,
which after-years had fulfilled.

"Your mother," he added, "was exactly
suited to him; and I believe she never had
occasion to pull the check-string, which, in her
case, would have been a silken one. A love
of dissipation is no part of his natural
character. We all have great hopes from a
second marriage, which, between ourselves,
he meditates. We think it may reclaim
him. He thinks it may."

Two years afterwards, I was again in
London for the season, on my return from my
wedding tour. Clara Oatway had become
my wife. One evening I was at Drury Lane
Theatre. The play was over; the applause
had ceased, and the audience were subsiding
into their seats, when I was tapped on the
shoulder. Turning round, I beheld Garston.

"Arthur, a word or two with you," said
he, "if the little man's spell be not yet upon
you." (The elder Kean had been playing
Overreach.) "Are you alone?"

I explained that my wife was dining with
an old friend of my mother, and that I was
going to join her; congratulating him on his
accession to a title. He was now Lord
Walford.

"It came too late," he said, "and therefore
had no charm for me. What it brought
with it was, however, welcome; not the