loved me once!—­you do still! then follow my directions.  I have a head.  Ay, you think it wild?  ’Tis true, my mother was a poetess.  But I will convince my son as I am convincing the world-tut, tut!  To avoid swelling talk, I tell you, Richie, I have my hand on the world’s wheel, and now is the time for you to spring from it and gain your altitude.  If you fail, my success is emptiness.’

‘Will you avoid Edbury and his like, and protect yourself?’ was my form of stipulation, spoken to counteract his urgency.

He gave no answer beyond a wave of the hand suitable to his princely one-coloured costume of ruffled lavender silk, and the magnificent leg he turned to front me.  My senses even up to that period were so impressionable as to be swayed by a rich dress and a grand manner when circumstances were not too unfavourable.  Now they seemed very favourable, for they offered me an upward path to tread.  His appearance propitiated me less after he had passed through the hands of his man Tollingby, but I had again surrendered the lead to him.  As to the risk of proceedings being taken against him, he laughed scornfully at the suggestion.  ’They dare not.  The more I dare, the less dare they.’  Again I listened to his curious roundabout reasoning, which dragged humour at its heels like a comical cur, proclaiming itself imposingly, in spite of the mongrel’s barking, to be prudence and common sense.  Could I deny that I owed him gratitude for the things I cherished most?—­for my acquaintance with Ottilia?—­for his services in Germany?—­for the prospect of my elevation in England?  I could not; and I tried hard to be recklessly grateful.  As to money, he reiterated that he could put his hand on it to satisfy the squire on the day of accounts:  for the present, we must borrow.  His argument upon borrowing—­which I knew well, and wondered that I did not at the outset disperse with a breath of contempt—­gained on me singularly when reviewed under the light of my immediate interests:  it ran thus:—­We have a rich or a barren future, just as we conceive it.  The art of generalship in life consists in gathering your scattered supplies to suit a momentous occasion; and it is the future which is chiefly in debt to us, and adjures us for its sake to fight the fight and conquer.  That man is vile and fit to be trampled on who cannot count his future in gold and victory.  If, as we find, we are always in debt to the past, we should determine that the future is in our debt, and draw on it.  Why let our future lie idle while we need succour?  For instance, to-morrow I am to have what saves my reputation in the battle to-day; shall I not take it at once?  The military commander who acts on that principle overcomes his adversary to a certainty.