There was a time, a time we have seen, when Lord Welter was a merry, humorous, thoughtless boy. A boy, one would have said, with as little real mischief in him as mifjht be. He might have made a decent member of society, who knows? But, to do him justice, he had had everything against him from his earliest childhood. He had never known what a mother was, or a sister. His earliest companions were grooms and gamekeepers; and his religious instruction was got mostly from his grandmother, whose old-fashioned Sunday-morning lectures and collect learnings, so rigidly pursued that he dreaded Sunday of all days in the week, were succeeded by cock-fighting in the Croft with his father in the afternoon, and lounging away the evening among the stable-boys. As Lord Saltire once said, in a former part of this story, “Ranford was what the young men of the day called an uncommon fast house.”

Fast enough, in truth. “All downhill and no drag on.” Welter soon defied his grandmother. For his father he cared nothing. Lord Ascot was so foolishly fond of the boy that he never contradicted him in anything, and sed even to laugh when he was impudent to his grandmother, whom, to do Lord Ascot justice, he respected more than any living woman. Tutors were tried, of whom Welter, by a happy combination of obstinacy and recklessness, managed to vanquish three, in as many months. It was hopeless. Lord Ascot would not hear of his going to school. He was his only boy, his darling. He could not part with him; and, when Lady Ascot pressed the matter, he grew obstinate, as he could at times, and said he would not. The boy would do well enough; he had been just like him at his age, and look at him now!

Lord Ascot was mistaken. He had not been quite like Lord Welter at his age. He had been a very quiet sort of boy indeed. Lord Ascot was a great stickler for blood in horses, and understood such things. I wonder he could not have seen the difference between the sweet, loving face of his mother, capable of violent, furious passion though it was, and that of his coarse, stupid, handsome, gipsy-looking wife, and judged accordingly. He had engrafted a new strain of blood on the old Staunton stock, and was to reap the consequences.

What was to become of Lord Welter was a great problem, still unsolved; when, one night, shortly before Charles paid his first visit to Ranford, vice Cuthbert, disapproved of. Lord Ascot came up, as his custom was, into his mother’s dressing-room, to have half-an-hour’s chat with her before she went to bed.

“I wonder, mother dear,” he said, “whether I ought to ask old Saltire again, or not? He wouldn’t come last time, you know. If I thought he wouldn’t come, I’d ask him.”

“You must ask him,” said Lady Ascot, brushing her grey hair, “and he will come.”

“Very well,” said Lord Ascot. “It’s a bore; but you must have some one to flirt with, I suppose.”

Lady Ascot laughed. In fact, she had written before, and told him that he must come, for she wanted him; and come he did.

“Now, Maria,” said Lord Saltire, on the first night, as soon as he and Lady Ascot were seated together on a quiet sofa, “what is it? Why have you brought me down to meet this mob of jockeys and gamekeepers? A fortnight here, and not a soul to speak to, but Mainwaring and yourself. After I was here last time, dear old Lady Hainault croaked out in a large crowd that some one smelt of the stable.

“Dear old soul,” said Lady Ascot. “What a charming, delicate wit she has. You will have to come here again, though. Every year, mind.”

“Kismet,” said Lord Saltire. “But what is the matter?”

“What do you think of Ascot's boy?”

“Oh, Lord!” said Lord Saltire. “So I have been brought all this way to be consulted about a schoolboy. Well, I think he looks an atrocious young cub, as like his dear mamma as he can be. I always used to expect that she would call me a pretty gentleman, and want to tell my fortune.”

Lady Ascot smiled: she knew her man. She knew he would have died for her and hers.

“He is getting very troublesome,” said Lady Ascot. “What would you reco — ”

“Send him to Eton,” said Lord Saltire.

“But he is very high-spirited, James, and — ”

“Send him to Eton. Do you hear, Maria?”

“But Ascot won’t let him go,” said Lady Ascot.

“Oh, he won’t, won’t he?” said Lord Saltire. “Now, let us hear no more of the cub, but have our picquet in peace.”

The next morning Lord Saltire had an interview with Lord Ascot, and two hours afterwards it was known that Lord Welter was to go to Eton at once.

And so, when Lord Welter met Charles at Twyford, he told him of it.

At Eton, he had rapidly found other boys brought up with the same tastes as himself, and with these he consorted. A rapid interchange of experiences went on among these young gentlemen; which ended in Lord Welter, at all events, being irreclaimably vicious.

Lord Welter had fallen in love with Charles, as boys do, and their friendship had lasted on, waning as it went, till they permanently met again at Oxford. There, though their intimacy was as close as ever, the old love died out, for a time, amidst riot and debauchery. Charles had some sort of a creed about women; Lord Welter had none. Charles drew a line at a certain point, low down it might be, which he never passed; Welter set no bounds anywhere. What Lord Hainault said of him at Tattersall’s was true. One day, when they had been arguing on this point rather sharply, Charles said —

“If you mean what you say, you are not fit to come into a gentleman’s house. But you don’t mean it, old cock; so don’t be an ass.”

He did mean it, and Charles was right. Alas! that ever he should have come to Ravenshoe!

Lord Welter had lived so long in the house with Adelaide that he never thought of making love to her. They used to quarrel, like Benedict and Beatrice. What happened was her fault. She was worthless. Worthless. Let us have done with it. I can expand over Lord Saltire and Lady Ascot, and such good people, but I cannot over her, more than is necessary.

Two things Lord Welter was very fond of — brawling and dicing. He was an arrant bully; very strong, and perfect in the use of his fists, and of such courage and tenacity that, having once begun a brawl, no one had ever made him leave it, save as an unqualified victor. This was getting well known now. Since he had left Oxford and had been living in London, he had been engaged in two or three personal encounters in the terribly fast society to which he had betaken himself, and men were getting afraid of him. Another thing was, that, drink as he would, he never played the worse for it. He was a lucky player. Sometimes, after winning money of a man, he would ask him home to have his revenge. That man generally went again and again to Lord Welter’s house in St. John’s Wood, and did not find himself any the richer. It was the most beautiful little gambling den in London, and it was presided over by one of the most beautiful, witty, fascinating women ever seen. A woman with whom all the men fell in love; so staid, so respectable, and charmingly behaved. Lord Welter always used to call her Lady Welter; so they all called her Lady Welter too, and treated her as though she were.

But this Lady Welter was soon to be dethroned to make room for Adelaide. A day or two before they went off together, this poor woman got a note from Welter to tell her to prepare for a new mistress. It was no blow to her. He had prepared her for it for some time. There might have been tears, wild tears, in private; but what cared he for the tears of such an one? When Lord Welter and Adelaide came home, and Adelaide came with him into the hall, she advanced towards her, dressed as a waiting-woman, and said quietly,

“You are welcome home, madam.”

It was Ellen, and Lord Welter was the delinquent, as you have guessed already. When she fled from Ravenshoe, she was flying from the anger of her supposed brother William; for he thought he knew all about it; and, when Charles and Marston saw her passing roimd the cliff, she was making her weary way on foot towards Exeter to join him in London. After she was missed, William had written to Lord Welter, earnestly begging him to tell him if he had heard of her. And Welter had written back to him that he knew nothing, on his honour. Alas for Welter’s honour, and William’s folly in believing him!

Poor Ellen! Lord Welter had thought that she would have left the house, and had good reason for thinking so. But, when he got home, there she was. All her finery cast away, dressed plainly and quietly. And there she stayed, waiting on Adelaide, demure and quiet as a waiting-woman should be. Adelaide had never been to Ravenshoe, and did not know her. Lord Welter had calculated on her going; but she stayed on. Why?

You must bear with me, indeed you must, at such times as these. I touch as lightly as I can; but I have undertaken to tell a story, and I must tell it. These things are going on about us, and we try to ignore them, till they are thnist rudely upon us, as they are twenty times a year. No English story about young men could lie complete without bringing in subjects which some may think best left alone. Let us comfort ourselves with one great, undeniable fact, — the immense improvement in morals which has taken place in the last ten years. The very outcry which is now raised against such relations shows plainly one thing at least — that undeniable facts are being winked at no longer, and that some reform is coming. Every younger son who can command ￡200 a year ought to be allowed to marry in his own rank in life, whatever that may be. They will bo uncomfortable, and have to save and push; and very good thing for them. They won’t lose caste. There are some things worse than mere discomfort. Let lis look at bare facts, which no one dare deny. There is in the great world, and the upper middle-class world too, a crowd of cadets; younger sons, clerks, officers in the army, and so on; non-marrying men, as the slang goes............