I had not an ex-pensive nor a vicious habit of any sort.

Of houses, horses, hounds, packs, and menials, there were none to vex or perplex me.

In every particular save one I was completely my own master.
That one was the near, dear, cherished sentiment that rendered Anna in my eyes an angel (and truly she was little short of it in those of other people), and made her the polar star to which every wish pointed.

How gladly would I have paid half a million just then to be the grandson of a baronet with precedency from the seventeenth century! There was, however, another and a present cause for un-easiness that gave me even more concern than the fact that my family reached the dark ages with so much embarrassing facility.

In witnessing the dying agony of my ancestor I had got a dread lesson on the vanity, the hopeless character, the dangers, and the delusions of wealth that time can never eradicate.