At length, after a fortnight’s delay and meditation, he wrote shortly to Saville and his son; saying, after much reproach to the latter, that if the commission could really be purchased at the sum specified he was willing to make a sacrifice, for which he must pinch himself, and conclude the business. This touched the son, but Saville laughed him out of the twinge of good feeling; and very shortly afterwards, Percy Godolphin was gazetted as a cornet in the ---- Life-Guards. The life of a soldier, in peace, is indolent enough, Heaven knows! Percy liked the new uniforms and the new horses--all of which were bought on credit. He liked his new companions; he liked balls; he liked flirting; he did not dislike Hyde Park from four o’clock till six; and he was not very much bored by drills and parade. It was much to his credit in the world that he was the protege of a man who had so great a character for profligacy and gambling as Augustus Saville; and under such auspices he found himself launched at once into the full tide of “good society.” Young, romantic, high-spirited--with the classic features of an Antinous, and a very pretty knack of complimenting and writing verses--Percy Godolphin soon became, while yet more fit in years for the nursery than the world, “the curled darling” of that wide class of high-born women who have nothing to do but to hear love made to them, and who, all artifice themselves, think the love sweetest which springs from the most natural source. They like boyhood when it is not bashful; and from sixteen to twenty, a Juan need scarcely go to Seville to find a Julia. But love was not the worst danger that menaced the intoxicated boy. Saville, the most seductive of tutors--Saville who, in his wit; his bon ton, his control over the great world, seemed as a god to all less elevated and less aspiring,--Saville was Godolphin’s constant companion; and Saville was worse than a profligate--he was a gambler! One would think that gaming was the last vice that could fascinate the young: its avarice, its grasping, its hideous selfishness, its cold, calculating meanness, would, one might imagine, scare away all who have yet other and softer deities to worship. But, in fact, the fault of youth is that it can rarely resist whatever is the Mode. Gaming, in all countries, is the vice of an aristocracy. The young find it already established in the best circles; they are enticed by the habit of others, and ruined when the habit becomes their own. “You look feverish, Percy,” said Saville, as he met his pupil in the Park. “I don’t wonder at it; you lost infernally last night.” “More than I can pay,” replied Percy, with a quivering lip. “No! you shall pay it to-morrow, for you shall go shares with me to-night. Observe,” continued Saville, lowering his voice, “_I never lose_.” “How _never?_”