His age was two and thirty.  A decade ago he had dreamt of distinguishing himself in the Chamber of Peers; why should poverty bar the way of intellect and zeal?  Experience taught him that, though money might not be indispensable to such a career as he imagined, the lack of it was only to be supplied by powers such as he certainly did not possess.  Abashed at the thought of his presumption he withdrew altogether from the seat to which his birth entitled him, and at the same time ceased to appear in Society.  He had the temper of a student, and among his books he soon found consolation for the first disappointments of youth.  Study, however, led him by degrees to all the questions rife in the world about him; with the inevitable result that his maturer thought turned back upon things he fancied himself to have outgrown.  His time had been wasted.  At thirty-two all he had clearly learnt was a regret for vanished years.

He resisted as a temptation the philosophic quietism which had been his strength and his pride.  From the pages of Marcus Aurelius, which he had almost by heart, one passage only was allowed to dwell with him:  “When thou art hard to be stirred up and awaked out of thy sleep, admonish thyself and call to mind that to perform actions tending to the common good is that which thine own proper constitution, and that which the nature of man, do require.”  Morning and night, the question with him became, what could he do in the cause of civilisation?  And about this time it chanced that he made the acquaintance of Dyce Lashmar.  He listened, presently, to the bio-sociological theory of human life, believing it to be Lashmar’s own, and finding in it a great deal that was not only intellectually fruitful, but strong in appeal to his sympathies.  Here he saw the reconciliation of his aristocratic prejudices—­which he had little hope of ever overcoming—­with the humanitarian emotion and conviction which were also a natural part of his being.  All this did but contribute to his disquiet.  No longer occupied with definite studies, he often felt time heavy on his hands, and saw himself more obnoxious than ever to the charge of idleness.  Lashmar, though possibly his ambition had some alloy of self-seeking, gave an example of intellect applied to the world’s behoof; especially did his views on education, developed in a recent talk at the club, strike Dymchurch as commendable and likely to have influence.  He asked nothing better than an opportunity of devoting himself to a movement for educational reform.  The abstract now disgusted him well nigh as much as the too grossly actual.  Thus, chancing to open Shelley, he found with surprise that the poet of his adolescence not merely left him cold, but seemed verbose and tedious.