Wearing his title like a fool's cap, he mooned in by-paths which had become a maze.

Was it not the foolish title that bemused and disabled him?
Without it, would he not long ago have gone to work like other men, and had his part in the onward struggle?
Discontented with himself, ill at ease in his social position, reproachfully minded towards the ancestors who had ruined him, he fell into that most dangerous mood of the cultured and conscientious man, a feverish inclination for practical experiment in life.
His age was two and thirty.

A decade ago he had dreamt of distinguishing himself in the Chamber of Peers; why should poverty bar the way of intellect and zeal?
Experience taught him that, though money might not be indispensable to such a career as he imagined, the lack of it was only to be supplied by powers such as he certainly did not possess.

Abashed at the thought of his presumption he withdrew altogether from the seat to which his birth entitled him, and at the same time ceased to appear in Society.

He had the temper of a student, and among his books he soon found consolation for the first disappointments of youth.