He would be very sorry sometimes, very repentant, and would promise anything under the sun; but five minutes afterward he would go his own way just the same, and be as irritably resentful of interference as a proud, spoiled, still-childish temper can be.

And Cecil--the last man in the world to turn mentor--would light a cheroot, as he did to-night, and forget all about it.

The boy would be right enough when he had had his swing, he thought.

Bertie's philosophy was the essence of laissez-faire.
He would have defied a Manfred, or an Aylmer of Aylmer's Field, to be long pursued by remorse or care if he drank the right cru and lived in the right set.

"If it be very severe," he would say, "it may give him a pang once a twelvemonth--say the morning after a whitebait dinner.
Repentance is generally the fruit of indigestion, and contrition may generally be traced to too many truffles or olives." Cecil had no time or space for thought; he never thought; would not have thought seriously, for a kingdom.