It had been for him a great chance,--and he had lost it.
Who can say, too, that his only regret was for the money?
He had spoken once of it to a married sister of his, in whose house he had first met Lady Glencora.

"I shall never marry now,--that is all," he said--and then he went about, living his old reckless life, with the same recklessness as ever.

He was one of those young men with dark hair and blue eyes,--who wear no beard, and are certainly among the handsomest of all God's creatures.

No more handsome man than Burgo Fitzgerald lived in his days; and this merit at any rate was his,--that he thought nothing of his own beauty.

But he lived ever without conscience, without purpose,--with no idea that it behoved him as a man to do anything but eat and drink,--or ride well to hounds till some poor brute, much nobler than himself, perished beneath him.
He chiefly concerns our story at this present time because the Lady Glencora who had loved him,--and would have married him had not those sagacious heads prevented it,--was a cousin of Alice Vavasor's.