Michael Arranstoun folded a letter which he had been reading for the
seventh time, with a vicious intentness, and then jumping up from the
big leather chair in which he had been buried, he said aloud, "Damn!"

When a young, rich and good-looking man says that particular word aloud
with a fearful grind of the teeth, one may know that he is in the very
devil of a temper!

Michael Arranstoun was!

And, to be sure, he had ample reason, as you, my friend, who may happen
to have begun this tale, will presently see.

It is really most irritating to be suddenly confronted with the
consequences of one's follies at any age, but at twenty-four, when
otherwise the whole life is smiling for one, it seems quite too hard.

The frightful language this well-endowed young gentleman now indulged
in, half aloud and half in thought, would be quite impossible to put on
paper! It contained what almost amounted to curses for a certain lady
whose appearance, could she have been seen at this moment, suggested
that of a pious little saint.

"How the h---- can I keep from marrying her!" Mr. Arranstoun said more
than aloud this time, and then kicking an innocent footstool across the
room, he called his bulldog, put on his cap and stamped out on to the
old stone balcony which opened from this apartment, and was soon
stalking down the staircase and across the lawn to a little door in the
great fortified wall, which led into the park.