before his time. And so he had. His years were barely nine and forty,
yet in all save years, he was an aged man.

A noted character had been the Earl of Mount Severn. Not that he had
been a renowned politician, or a great general, or an eminent statesman,
or even an active member in the Upper House; not for any of these had
the earl's name been in the mouths of men. But for the most reckless
among the reckless, for the spendthrift among spendthrifts, for the
gamester above all gamesters, and for a gay man outstripping the gay--by
these characteristics did the world know Lord Mount Severn. It was
said his faults were those of his head; that a better heart or a more
generous spirit never beat in human form; and there was much truth in
this. It had been well for him had he lived and died plain William Vane.
Up to his five and twentieth year, he had been industrious and steady,
had kept his terms in the Temple, and studied late and early. The
sober application of William Vane had been a by word with the embryo
barristers around; Judge Vane, they ironically called him; and they
strove ineffectually to allure him away to idleness and pleasure.
But young Vane was ambitious, and he knew that on his own talents and
exertions must depend his own rising in the world. He was of excellent
family, but poor, counting a relative in the old Earl of Mount Severn.
The possibility of his succeeding to the earldom never occurred to him,
for three healthy lives, two of them young, stood between him and
the title. Yet those have died off, one of apoplexy, one of fever,
in Africa, the third boating at Oxford; and the young Temple student,
William Vane, suddenly found himself Earl of Mount Severn, and the
lawful possessor of sixty thousand a year.

His first idea was, that he should never be able to spend the money;
that such a sum, year by year, could _not_ be spent. It was a wonder