Wilton could not help smiling; but he believed and trusted, from all that he knew of Lord Sherbrooke’s situation, that new motives and nobler ones than those which had ever influenced him before, produced his present resolution, and would support him in it.

The business which he had to transact with the Earl proved very brief; and after it was over, he sought Lord Sherbrooke again, with feelings of real and deep interest in all that concerned him.  He found the young nobleman seated with his feet on the fire-place, and a light book in his hand, sometimes letting it drop upon his knee, and falling into a fit of thought, sometimes reading a few lines attentively, sometimes gazing upon the page, evidently without attending to its contents.

He suffered Wilton to be in the room several minutes without speaking to him; and his friend, knowing the eccentricities that occasionally took possession of him, was about to quit the room and leave him, when he started up, threw the book into the midst of the fire, and said, “Where are you going, Wilton?  I will walk with you.”

They issued forth together into the streets, and entering St. James’s Park, took their way round by the head of the decoy towards the side of the river.  While in the streets they both kept silence; but as soon as they had passed the ever-moving crowds that swarm in the thoroughfares of the great metropolis, Wilton began the conversation, by inquiring eagerly after his friend’s wife.

“She is nearly well,” replied Lord Sherbrooke, coldly—­“out of all danger, at least.  It is I that am sick, Wilton—­sick at heart.”

“I hope not cold at heart, Sherbrooke,” replied Wilton, somewhat pained by the tone in which the other spoke.  “I should think such a being as I saw with you might well warm you to constancy as well as love.  I hope, Sherbrooke, those feelings I beheld excited in you have not, in this instance, evaporated as soon as in others.”

Lord Sherbrooke turned and gazed in his friend’s face for a moment intently, even sternly, and then replied, “Love her, Wilton?  I love her better than anything in earth or in heaven!  It is for her sake I am sad; and yet she is so noble, that why should I fear to bear what she will never shrink from.”

“Nay, my dear Sherbrooke,” replied Wilton.  “The very resolution which I see you have taken to shake yourself free of the trammels of your debts ought to give you joy and confidence.”

“Debts!” said Lord Sherbrooke—­“debts!  Do you think that it was debts I had in view when I ordered my horses to be sold, and my carriages to follow them, and kicked my Italian valet down stairs, and dismissed my mistresses, and got rid of half-a-dozen other blood-suckers?—­My debts had nothing to do with it.  By Heaven, Wilton, if it had been for nothing but that, I would have spent twenty thousand pounds more before the year was over; for when one has a mind to enrage one’s father, or go to gaol, or anything of that kind, one had better do it for a large sum at once, in a gentleman-like way.  Oh no, I have other things in my head, Wilton, that you know nothing about.”