As the day for the contest drew near the interest became really exciting; and on the Saturday morning there was quite a crowd on the banks.  The whole week, since Monday, had been most beautiful—­calm, warm, lovely.  Percival Elster, in his rather idle fashion, was not going to join in the contest:  there were enough without him, he said.

He was standing now, talking to Anne.  His face wore a sad expression, as she glanced up at him from beneath the white feather of her rather large-brimmed straw hat.  Anne had been a great deal at Hartledon that week, and was as interested in the race as any of them, wearing Lord Hartledon’s colours.

“How did you hear it, Anne?” he was asking.

“Mamma told me.  She came into my room just now, and said there had been words.”

“Well, it’s true.  The doctor took me to task exactly as he used to do when I was a boy.  He said my course of life was sinful; and I rather fired up at that.  Idle and useless it may be, but sinful it is not:  and I said so.  He explained that he meant that, and persisted in his assertion—­that an idle, aimless, profitless life was a sinful one.  Do you know the rest?”

“No,” she faltered.

“He said he would give me to the end of the year.  And if I were then still pursuing my present frivolous course of life, doing no good to myself or to anyone else, he should cancel the engagement.  My darling, I see how this pains you.”

She was suppressing her tears with difficulty.  “Papa will be sure to keep his word, Percival.  He is so resolute when he thinks he is right.”

“The worst is, it’s true.  I do fall into all sorts of scrapes, and I have got out of money, and I do idle my time away,” acknowledged the young man in his candour.  “And all the while, Anne, I am thinking and hoping to do right.  If ever I get set on my legs again, won’t I keep on them!”

“But how many times have you said so before!” she whispered.

“Half the follies for which I am now paying were committed when I was but a boy,” he said.  “One of the men now visiting here, Dawkes, persuaded me to put my name to a bill for him for fifteen hundred pounds, and I had to pay it.  It hampered me for years; and in the end I know I must have paid it twice over.  I might have pleaded that I was under age when he got my signature, but it would have been scarcely honourable to do so.”

“And you never profited by the transaction?”

“Never by a sixpence.  It was done for Dawkes’s accommodation, not mine.  He ought to have paid it, you say?  My dear, he is a man of straw, and never had fifteen hundred pounds of his own in his life.”

“Does Lord Hartledon know of this?  I wonder he has him here.”

“I did not mention it at the time; and the thing’s past and done with.  I only tell you now to give you an idea of the nature of my embarrassments and scrapes.  Not one in ten has really been incurred for myself:  they only fall upon me.  One must buy experience.”