"God knows I do not want to continue any useless expenditure," said I, "it is with the wish to become free from debt, to live 'cleanly and like a gentleman,' that I come to bore you with my affairs!"
"Every one smarting under the effects of their folly is ready to abjure it, but when the sting is removed, you can hardly answer for yourself," said his Lordship.
"No, but really I have not a single dissipated or extravagant taste; the more unpardonable, you will say, my getting ahead of my income; granted, yet you, living here in unbroken quiet, can hardly judge the force that habit acquires, when your only companions are a set of men whose occupation is spending, whose excitement is prodigality. It was the want of some better and deeper interest that threw me into expensive follies which I now regret; but, Egerton, I have some more certain guarantee to give for my permanent reformation than a mere desire to get rid of difficulties. I—there is a Miss—that is, I want to marry and settle."
"That alters the face of affairs; I shall be happy to do anything I can to forward this favourable arrangement; have you proposed in form? or ascertained the amount of the lady's fortune?"
I replied, laughing, "Yes and no, I have not proposed, and her fortune is like my own—a blank."
"Really, Frederic, there are no limits to the imprudence into which the impetuosity of a worldly and unchastened spirit hurry those lost to the knowledge of better things. I do not see how your marriage, with a penniless girl is to better your position in any point of view, temporal or spiritual."
"There is such a thing as awakening to better and purer affections," I replied, "more settled convictions or"—
"It is our duty to curb our affections, which are all depraved and sinful," interrupted Lord Egerton, "but to return to the point we started from; what is the scrape, as you term it? substituting, no doubt, a delusive jest to disguise the real colour of the transaction."
"Why really nothing more dreadful than is done every day;" and I told him of my bets and horses; of raising the wind through the means of his protegées, the Jews; of their renewal of bills at enormous interest, and the whole blood-sucking system; that my great object was to get free from their fangs, to cut the army, marry, and settle down somewhere as something, I did not know exactly what, but I had an idea of farming: this last was a happy stroke, I thought, for if Egerton really wants to make a good boy of me, now is his time; let him offer me one of his Devonshire farms, for I know that he purchased property there some years ago. He sat playing with his seals and chain, and looking confoundedly sour, longer than I could wait with any degree of patience; at last he said, in a discontented tone, "I suppose you want me to join you in raising money on your 'younger son's portion?' but even if I were to consent to so great an inconvenience, it will not, I should think, forward your matrimonial scheme, which you'll excuse me for designating as peculiarly absurd under the circumstances."
"You may call it what you like," I replied, "though I am not aware I asked your opinion about it; of course if I must give it up, I must; for I would not drag any girl into an abyss of poverty; but it will be a blow more severe than you think."