For though Vance Churchill could struggle against poverty, neglect, and hardship, he could not withstand ease, comparative wealth, and the attractions of society. He was eminently a "social" man; a big, jolly jovial fellow, with bright blue eyes, large brown whiskers, and a splendid set of teeth. He had capital lungs, and sang a capital song in a deep baritone voice, and he had nice feeling in his singing, which so seldom accompanies correct musical execution; but when Vance Churchill sang "Farewell, my trim-built Wherry," or "Tom Bowling," all the female portion of his audience was in tears, while the men felt husky and uncomfortable. He became the rage in a certain set of fast young men about town, and in that pleasant Upper Bohemia wherein so many literary men, artists, and actors of that day used to spend their time; not a Bohemia of taprooms and sanded floors, of long clay-pipes and spittoons and twopennyworths of gin, nor of Haymarket night-houses and drunken trulls, nor of blind-hooky and _vingt-et-un_ parties in dingy chambers; but a Bohemia of green-rooms and _coulisses_, of sparkling little suppers afterwards at Vauxhall, where wit would flow as fast as the champagne, where jokes would be more telling than the hot punch, and whence the mad party would not unfrequently dash away in their carriages to breakfast at the Star and Garter at Richmond, or to drink fresh milk and eat fresh butter in a Hampstead farmhouse. A Bohemia, the denizens of which always would have good clothes and fine linen on their backs, gold watches in their pockets, and guineas in their purses, let who would pay for it; and who roared with laughter at the astonishment of the world at their vagaries, increasing their eccentricities, and saying of the world as Balzac's actress said, "_Qu'importe? donne leur des grimaces pour leur argent, et vivons heureux!_" Petted and fêted by the style of society in which he revelled, Vance Churchill had yet the grace not to attempt to force his wife to join it; indeed he had good reason for keeping her away. For the ladies liked Vance Churchill vastly, and Vance returned the compliment, and behaved just as though there were no moral and legal ties binding him to any one in particular. He loved his wife sincerely all the time, and in his quiet moments would tear his hair, and stamp upon the ground, and curse his own weakness and folly, and his treatment of that angel who sat patiently at home attending to and teaching their little boy, and who never reproached him save by her pale face and broken spirit; and then, as evening came round, Marmaduke Wentworth would call for him, or the servant would bring him a dainty little note, written in a very scrawly hand, which she would hold in the corner of her dingy apron, and which Vance would seize from her, and after reading it he would sally out, and commence his vagaries _da capo_.