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At the ti of the three letters, at which our story is supposed to begin, she was driven very hard for money Sir Felix was then twenty-five, had been in a fashionable regiment for four years, had already sold out, and, to own the truth at once, had altogether wasted the property which his father had left him So much the mother knew,--and knew, therefore, that with her lihter, but also the baronet She did not knoever, the aations;--nor, indeed, did he, or any one else A baronet, holding a commission in the Guards, and known to have had a fortune left hi into debt; and Sir Felix had es His life had been in every way bad He had become a burden on his mother so heavy,--and on his sister also,--that their life had become one of unavoidable embarrassments But not for a moment, had either of theht by the conduct of both father and iven in a h every virtue was expected frohter The lesson had come to her so early in life that she had learned it without the feeling of any grievance She lamented her brother's evil conduct as it affected hiether as it affected herself That all her interests in life should be made subservient to him was natural to her; and when she found that her little comforts were discontinued, and hereaten up all that was his oas now eating up also all that was his ht to think that men in that rank of life in which she had been born always did eat up everything

The ht better be said, more open to censure The boy, who had been beautiful as a star, had ever been the cynosure of her eyes, the one thing on which her heart had riveted itself Even during the career of his folly she had hardly ventured to say a word to hi hi she had spoilt hi she still spoilt him as a ht in hearing of doings which if not vicious of theance She had so indulged him that even in her own presence he was never ashamed of his own selfishness or apparently conscious of the injustice which he did to others