was a very fair world on which he opened his eyes, a world in which rank
and wealth and exceptional personal gifts should have ensured for him a
leading _rôle_. He was still in the cradle when his father, the second
lord, died; and he was barely nine years old when the death of his elder
brother made the school-boy a full-blown Marquess, the inheritor of vast
estates and a princely rent-roll.

But Fate, which had showered such gifts on the young lord had, as so
often happens, marred them all by the curse of heredity. The taint of
gambling was in the boy's blood. His mother had won an unenviable
reputation throughout Europe by her passion for gambling; indeed there
were few gaming-tables in Europe at which the "jolly fast Marchioness"
was not a familiar and notorious figure. And his father, the Marquess,
was as devoted to horses and turf-gambling as his wife to her cards and
roulette. That the child of such parents should inherit their depraved
tastes is not to be marvelled at. And it was not long before they
manifested themselves in a dangerous form.

While he was still an undergraduate at Oxford the young Marquess who,
from childhood, could not bear the sight of a book when there was a dog
or a horse to claim his attention, began that career on the turf which
was to be as tragic in its end as it was dazzling in its zenith. He
bought from a Mr Henry Padwick for £13,500 a horse called Kangaroo,
which was not worth the cost of his keep. What a fraudulent animal he
was is proved by the fact that he never won a penny for his purchaser,
and ended his career, as he ought to have begun it, between the shafts
of a hansom.

But, so far from being disheartened by this initial experience, Lord
Hastings had barely thrown aside his cap and gown before he was owner of