This pampered darling of his mother, this remarkable youth whose leading idea was that the world and all that was therein had been created expressly for him--if, indeed, he had ever stopped in his career of selfish lust to form an idea so definite--this youth of many privileges, before whom the path of life was rolled smooth and carpeted, on whom the sun dare not shine too freely nor any wintry storm beat untempered, was now causing his mother more agony than she ever imagined she could bear and live. She felt she was wronged somehow in having so much sorrow by one she so deeply loved. Had she not done everything for him all his life, given him all he asked, made the whole household his slaves, forbidden his masters to task his brain with too many studies, poured handfuls of pocket-money into his lap, and in all ways treated him like a demi-god? Yes, yes; she knew that no mother could have done more, felt it in her heart as she reviewed the past, and yet had not this precious boy been stabbing her to the heart every day of his life? Lady Harriet felt that the world was out of joint. Others, less blind, will say that this nurture would have destroyed the noblest of natures. On a commonplace mind like Cecil Wiseman's its effect was disastrous. The young man was, about the time of Sally Wanless's entry on service at the Grange, some twenty-four years of age, and handsome enough to look upon. When he liked his manners were engaging, and his conversation not without shrewdness. But its range was limited to matters of the stable. He had no acquaintance with literature outside the sporting papers and some filthy English novels. French he had never learned to read. He shone more in the stable than in drawing-rooms, and understood the philosophy of horse jockeys, or racing touts, better than the difference between right and wrong. If he had a pet ambition it was to "make a pot of money" on a horse, and if he had not been the heir to a great estate he might have distinguished himself as a horse-dealer, that is, had he not come to the treadmill before he got the chance. The social position to which he was born saved him the trouble of choosing a profession, and from the grasp of the law, but it did not prevent him from being a criminal worse than many a poor wretch in the dock. A commission had been bought for him some years before in a regiment of dragoons, and by means of money he was now a captain, but there was little about him of the soldier. When not bawling on a race course he was lounging about the clubs of Pall Mall, playing billiard matches for high stakes, or losing money at cards with the freehandedness of a gentleman of fashion. What leisure these high occupations left him was devoted to the society of loose women, by whom his purse was just as freely emptied.