This bold plunge seemed to startle my companion not a little, and he moved rather restlessly on his seat as he replied, "Indeed! if in my power to assist you, I trust I shall not be deficient in the performance of my duty, but remember, I cannot countenance the godless waste of means entrusted"-- "God knows I do not want to continue any useless expenditure," said I, "it is with the wish to become free from debt, to live 'cleanly and like a gentleman,' that I come to bore you with my affairs!" "Every one smarting under the effects of their folly is ready to abjure it, but when the sting is removed, you can hardly answer for yourself," said his Lordship. "No, but really I have not a single dissipated or extravagant taste; the more unpardonable, you will say, my getting ahead of my income; granted, yet you, living here in unbroken quiet, can hardly judge the force that habit acquires, when your only companions are a set of men whose occupation is spending, whose excitement is prodigality. It was the want of some better and deeper interest that threw me into expensive follies which I now regret; but, Egerton, I have some more certain guarantee to give for my permanent reformation than a mere desire to get rid of difficulties. I--there is a Miss--that is, I want to marry and settle." "That alters the face of affairs; I shall be happy to do anything I can to forward this favourable arrangement; have you proposed in form? or ascertained the amount of the lady's fortune?" I replied, laughing, "Yes and no, I have not proposed, and her fortune is like my own--a blank." "Really, Frederic, there are no limits to the imprudence into which the impetuosity of a worldly and unchastened spirit hurry those lost to the knowledge of better things. I do not see how your marriage, with a penniless girl is to better your position in any point of view, temporal or spiritual." "There is such a thing as awakening to better and purer affections," I replied, "more settled convictions or"-- "It is our duty to curb our affections, which are all depraved and sinful," interrupted Lord Egerton, "but to return to the point we started from; what is the scrape, as you term it? substituting, no doubt, a delusive jest to disguise the real colour of the transaction."