That was a nice character for a man who ever from his youth upward had been a fighter to find himself possessed of. I did wish he had been a sinner on some other lines. There are offences which a man, having committed, may, as Foster suggested, live down. But none of them seemed to have come his lordship's way. He had done the unforgivable, and unforgettable, things--the things whose memory load a man with ignominy long after he has rotted in his grave. One might as well talk of flying as of living them down. Even though he attained to the years of Methuselah, to the last hour of his life he'd be a pariah. Perhaps, after all, his lordship had done the wisest thing in going away. It was I who had been a fool in coming back. The Marquis of Twickenham was a frost. The accidents of his position only made that fact the more notorious. Though he had a million in ready money, so huge a rent roll, lands and houses, decent folks would have none of him. It was not necessary for me to have become such a mangy knave if I desired to hobnob with the other sort. Not a clean-smelling soul came near. But I had visits from various representatives of the scum of the earth, who thought, even after fifteen years, that they had a pull on me. Lord! how I enlightened them. They all, with one accord, were struck by certain developments in his lordship's character. But I hadn't done this thing to convert the riff-raff, nor with any intention of conveying to their benighted intelligence the elementary fact that there's no fool like a certain kind of knave. I wasn't happy. Better Mary, and the kids, and Little Olive Street, a hundred thousand times than this. The joke was when Foster, who saw how the shoe pinched, suggested I should marry. I thanked him kindly, and asked him, since he had gone so far, if he'd go a little further and name a lady. 'For instance, have you a daughter of your own?' 'My lord, I remain a bachelor.' 'Then who has a daughter, or a sister, who you think would suit?' 'Undoubtedly there are many such.' 'Of my own degree?' 'There are good women of all degrees.' 'Meaning that the good women of my own degree would probably decline.' 'My lord, if you will allow me to say so, I think you take too pessimistic a view of your own position. At first I thought your point of view too optimistic. Now you appear to have gone to the other extreme.' 'I didn't know then what I know now.' 'I don't understand.' 'Possibly not. You think me too pessimistic. Go on.' 'For one who has lived such a youth as your lordship it seems to me that one very desirable course is open.' 'Suicide?' 'No, my lord, not suicide.' 'Murder? To be of the slightest service it would have to be on a wholesale scale.' 'The course I would advise would be a new environment.' 'Meaning?' 'Let the past be past. Treat it as a closed book not to be reopened. Cut it adrift. And let your lordship seek fresh acquaintances, and fresh associations.'