guilt.

'I suppose I'm idle, and what is worse, I know I'm a fool,' said
Conyngham himself to his tutor when that gentleman, with a
toleration which was undeserved, took him severely to task before
sending him up for the Bar examination. The tutor said nothing, but
he suspected that this, his wildest pupil, was no fool. Truth to
tell, Frederick Conyngham had devoted little thought to the matter
of which he spoke, namely, himself, and was perhaps none the worse
for that. A young man who thinks too often usually falls into the
error of also thinking too much, of himself.

The examination was, however, safely passed, and in due course
Frederick was called to the Irish Bar, where a Queen's Counsel, with
an accent like rich wine, told him that he was now a gintleman, and
entitled so to call himself.

All these events were left behind, and Conyngham, sitting alone in
his rooms in Norfolk Street, Strand, three days after the breaking
of Sir John Pleydell's windows, was engaged in realising that the
predicted future was still in every sense before him, and in nowise
nearer than it had been in his mother's lifetime.

This realisation of an unpleasant fact appeared in no way to disturb
his equanimity, for, as he knocked his pipe against the bars of the
fire, he murmured a popular air in a careless voice. The firelight
showed his face to be pleasant enough in a way that left the land of
his birth undoubted. Blue eyes, quick and kind; a square chin,
closely curling hair, and square shoulders bespoke an Irishman.
Something, however, in the cut of his lips--something close and