the fool is not yet nineteen." From a pigeon Armigell Wade became a hawk,
and at thirty years of age, having lost together with his estates
all chance of winning the one woman who might have saved him--his cousin
Ellinor--he became that most unhappy of all beings, a well-born blackleg.
When he was told by thin-lipped, cool Colonel Wade that the rich shipbuilder,
Sir Richard Devine, had proposed an alliance with fair-haired gentle Ellinor,
he swore, with fierce knitting of his black brows, that no law of man
nor Heaven should further restrain him in his selfish prodigality.
"You have sold your daughter and ruined me," he said; "look to
the consequences." Colonel Wade sneered at his fiery kinsman:
"You will find Sir Richard's house a pleasant one to visit, Armigell;
and he should be worth an income to so experienced a gambler as yourself."
Lord Bellasis did visit at Sir Richard's house during the first year
of his cousin's marriage; but upon the birth of the son who is the hero
of this history, he affected a quarrel with the city knight,
and cursing him to the Prince and Poins for a miserly curmudgeon,
who neither diced nor drank like a gentleman, departed, more desperately
at war with fortune than ever, for his old haunts. The year 1827
found him a hardened, hopeless old man of sixty, battered in health
and ruined in pocket; but who, by dint of stays, hair-dye, and courage,
yet faced the world with undaunted front, and dined as gaily
in bailiff-haunted Belsize as he had dined at Carlton House.
Of the possessions of the House of Wotton Wade, this old manor,
timberless and bare, was all that remained, and its master rarely visited it.

On the evening of May 3, 1827, Lord Bellasis had been attending a pigeon
match at Hornsey Wood, and having resisted the importunities
of his companion, Mr. Lionel Crofton (a young gentleman-rake,
whose position in the sporting world was not the most secure),
who wanted him to go on into town, he had avowed his intention