All her thoughts in life, all her wishes and ambitions, were centred in her son; and although it was to the wild and reckless extravagance of his early life that she owed the penury which now pressed her, although but for his wasteful excesses she had still been in affluence and comfort, she never attached to him the slightest blame, nor did her lips ever utter one syllable of reproach. Strong in the conviction that so long as the wild excesses of youth stamp nothing of dishonor on the character, the true nature within has sustained no permanent injury, she waited patiently for the time when, this season of self-indulgence over, the higher dictates of manly reason would assert their influence, and that Charley, having sown his wild oats, would come forth rather chastened and sobered than stained by his intercourse with the world. If this theory of hers has its advocates, there are many--and wise people, too--who condemn it, and who deem those alone safe who have been carefully guarded from the way of temptation, and have been kept estranged from the seductions of pleasure. To ourselves the whole question resolves itself into the nature of the individual, at the same time that we had far rather repose our confidence in one who had borne his share in life's passages, gaining his experience, mayhap, with cost, but coming honorably through the trial, than on him who, standing apart, had but looked out over the troubled ocean of human passion, nor risked himself on the sea of man's temptations. The former was Conway's case: he had led a life of boundless extravagance; without any thought of the cost, he had launched out into every expensive pursuit. What we often hear applied to others figuratively, was strictly applicable to him; he never knew the value of money; he never knew that anything one desired could be overpaid for. The end came at last. With a yacht ready stored and fitted out for a Mediterranean cruise, with three horses heavily engaged at Doncaster, with a shooting-lodge filled with distinguished company in the Highlands, with negotiations all but completed for the Hooksley hounds, with speculations rife as to whether the Duchess of This or the Countess of That had secured him for a daughter or a niece, there came, one morning, the startling information from his solicitor that a large loan he had contemplated raising was rendered impossible by some casualty of the money-market Recourse must be had to the Jews; heavy liabilities incurred at Newmarket must be met at once and at any cost. A week of disaster fell exactly at this conjuncture; he lost largely at the Portland, largely on the turf; a brother officer, for whom he had given surety, levanted immensely in debt; while a local bank, in which a considerable sum of his was vested, failed. The men of sixty per cent saved him from shipwreck; but they took the craft for the salvage, and Conway was ruined.