Dilemmas of Pride, (Vol 1 of 3)

ld exactly dare to do to injure his cousins; but he hated them both, and kept an evil eye upon them. As for his female cousins, he did not take the trouble of actively hating them, he merely despised them as beings shut out from all possibility of inheriting the property. Beautiful and high born as they were, he would not have accepted the hand of any one of them had it been offered to him.

Sir Willoughby was goodnaturedly weak, and very vain;--his was a vanity however which, when it happened to be gratified, made him extremely happy, by keeping him in the highest good humour with himself. From him Geoffery won large sums at billiards, by flattering him on his play, 'till he induced him to give him, habitually, such odds as amounted, in point of fact, to giving him the game, or, in other words, the sum staked upon it.

Lady Arden often endeavoured to dissuade her son from acquiring so bad a habit as that of gambling, but in vain; for Willoughby, like all weak men, was obstinate to excess: he had