East Lynne | Page 4

grown old before his time. And so he had. His years were barely
nine and forty, yet in all save years, he was an aged man.
A noted character had been the Earl of Mount Severn. Not that he had
been a renowned politician, or a great general, or an eminent statesman,
or even an active member in the Upper House; not for any of these had
the earl's name been in the mouths of men. But for the most reckless
among the reckless, for the spendthrift among spendthrifts, for the
gamester above all gamesters, and for a gay man outstripping the
gay--by these characteristics did the world know Lord Mount Severn. It
was said his faults were those of his head; that a better heart or a more
generous spirit never beat in human form; and there was much truth in

this. It had been well for him had he lived and died plain William Vane.
Up to his five and twentieth year, he had been industrious and steady,
had kept his terms in the Temple, and studied late and early. The sober
application of William Vane had been a by word with the embryo
barristers around; Judge Vane, they ironically called him; and they
strove ineffectually to allure him away to idleness and pleasure. But
young Vane was ambitious, and he knew that on his own talents and
exertions must depend his own rising in the world. He was of excellent
family, but poor, counting a relative in the old Earl of Mount Severn.
The possibility of his succeeding to the earldom never occurred to him,
for three healthy lives, two of them young, stood between him and the
title. Yet those have died off, one of apoplexy, one of fever, in Africa,
the third boating at Oxford; and the young Temple student, William
Vane, suddenly found himself Earl of Mount Severn, and the lawful
possessor of sixty thousand a year.
His first idea was, that he should never be able to spend the money; that
such a sum, year by year, could /not/ be spent. It was a wonder his head
was not turned by adulation at the onset, for he was courted, flattered
and caressed by all classes, from a royal duke downward. He became
the most attractive man of his day, the lion in society; for independent
of his newly-acquired wealth and title, he was of distinguished
appearance and fascinating manners. 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. His thoughts
were back in the past. That was a foolish match of his, that Gretna
Green match for love, foolish so far as prudence went; but the countess
had been an affectionate wife to him, had borne with his follies and his
neglect, had been an admirable mother to their only child. One child
alone had been theirs, and in her thirteenth year the countess had died.
If they had but been blessed with a son--the earl moaned over the
long-continued disappointment still--he might have seen a way out of
his difficulties. The boy, as soon as he was of age, would have joined
with him in cutting off the entail, and----
"My lord," said a servant entering the room and interrupting the earl's
castles in the air, "a gentleman is asking to see you."
"Who?" cried the earl, sharply, not perceiving the card the man was
bringing. No unknown person, although wearing the externals of