overwhelming pecuniary difficulties, and now, with the cool confidence of
one entitled to respect and welcome, invites himself to my house. Coming
here," he continued, after a gloomy pause, and still pacing slowly
towards the house, "to collect amusing materials for next season's
gossip--stories about the married Benedick--the bankrupt beau--the outcast
tenant of a Cheshire wilderness"; and, as he said this, he looked at the
neglected prospect before him with an eye almost of hatred. "Aye, to see
the nakedness of the land is he coming, but he shall be disappointed. His
money may buy him a cordial welcome at an inn, but curse me if it shall
purchase him a reception here."

He again opened and glanced through the letter.

"Aye, purposely put in such a way that I can't decline it without
affronting him," he continued doggedly. "Well, then, he has no one to
blame but himself--affronted he shall be; I shall effectually put an end
to this humorous excursion. Egad, it is rather hard if a man cannot keep
his poverty to himself."

Sir Wynston Berkley was a baronet of large fortune--a selfish,
fashionable man, and an inveterate bachelor. He and Marston had been
schoolfellows, and the violent and implacable temper of the latter had as
little impressed his companion with feelings of regard, as the frivolity
and selfishness of the baronet had won the esteem of his relative. As
boys, they had little in common upon which to rest the basis of a
friendship, or even a mutual liking. Berkley was gay, cold, and
satirical; his cousin--for cousins they were--was jealous, haughty, and
relentless. Their negative disinclination to one another's society, not
unnaturally engendered by uncongenial and unamiable dispositions, had for
a time given place to actual hostility, while the two young men were at