The recollection of how his wealth had come to him weighed heavily on his mind, causing him to view all things in a most dismal manner, and tortured his sensitive disposition with irritating thoughts and maddening delusions. In vain he tried hard to shake off this gloomy feeling and enjoy the many-coloured life of the great city; in vain he told himself that the accident of his birth was no fault of his own and in vain he strove to take pleasure in the society of the men and women to whom he had been introduced by Basil Beaumont. It was all useless, for a dark cloud of bitterness and distrust seemed to settle upon the joyousness of his life which led him to view everything with jaundiced eyes. He felt that he had lost the adolescent zest for life as Donatello must have done after he had stained his hands with blood, and although he had youth, talent, good looks, and wealth, yet all these delightful gifts of the fairies were neutralized by the fatal gift of dishonour bestowed upon him by the malignant beldame who had proved herself the evil genius of his life. As soon as the business connected with the Garsworth estate was properly completed and he had been fully recognized as the heir of the old Squire, Bolby considering that he had done his duty, left the young man and his friend Dick pretty well to their own devices. Dick enjoyed everything with the inexhaustible appetite of youth, but Reginald took his pleasures, such as they were, in a listless manner, which showed how completely he had lost all capabilities of enjoyment. Mr. Pemberton had been rather irritated by the prosaic life they led when in the leading strings of Mr. Bolby, whose ideas of amusement were of the most primitive nature, rarely extending beyond an afternoon at the Zoo or a night at Madame Tussaud's or the Egyptian Hall. The only thing Dick saw in Mr. Bolby's ideas of life, which he considered at all meritorious were the excellent dinners which the little lawyer gave them, but Dick in his flying visits to Town had tasted of the Tree of Knowledge beneath whose shade were the music halls and the burlesque theatres, so he was anxious to go to such like places for his amusement.