But unfortunately, the prudence which had sustained William Vane, the poor law student, in his solitary Temple chambers entirely forsook William Vane, the young Earl of Mount Severn, and he commenced his career on a scale of speed so great, that all staid people said he was going to ruin and the deuce headlong.
But a peer of the realm, and one whose rent-roll is sixty thousand per annum, does not go to ruin in a day.

There sat the earl, in his library now, in his nine-and-fortieth year, and ruin had not come yet--that is, it had not overwhelmed him.

But the embarrassments which had clung to him, and been the destruction of his tranquility, the bane of his existence, who shall describe them?
The public knew them pretty well, his private friends knew better, his creditors best; but none, save himself knew, or could ever know, the worrying torment that was his portion, wellnigh driving him to distraction.

Years ago, by dint of looking things steadily in the face, and by economizing, he might have retrieved his position; but he had done what most people do in such cases--put off the evil day _sine die_, and gone on increasing his enormous list of debts.

The hour of exposure and ruin was now advancing fast.
Perhaps the earl himself was thinking so, as he sat there before an enormous mass of papers which strewed the library table.