drawn from his reserve and his gloom by the frank good-humour of his
companion. "I should like, I own, to make a clean breast of it; and
perhaps I may profit by your advice. You know, in the first place, that
after I left college, my father, seeing me indisposed for the Church, to
which he had always destined me in his own heart, and for which, indeed,
he had gone out of his way to maintain me at the University, gave me the
choice of his own business as a surveyor and land-agent, or of entering
into the mercantile profession. I chose the latter, and went to
Southampton, where we have a relation in business, to be initiated into
the elementary mysteries. There I became acquainted with a good
clergyman and his wife, and in that house I passed a great part of my
time."

"With the hope, I trust, on better consideration, of gratifying your
father's ambition and learning how to starve with gentility on a cure."

"Not much of that, I fear."

"Then the clergyman had a daughter?"

"You are nearer the mark now," said Mainwaring, colouring,--"though it
was not his daughter. A young lady lived in his family, not even related
to him; she was placed there with a certain allowance by a rich relation.
In a word, I admired, perhaps I loved, this young person; but she was
without an independence, and I not yet provided even with the substitute
of money,--a profession. I fancied (do not laugh at my vanity) that my
feelings might be returned. I was in alarm for her as well as myself; I
sounded the clergyman as to the chance of obtaining the consent of her
rich relation, and was informed that he thought it hopeless. I felt I
had no right to invite her to poverty and ruin, and still less to