But he looked
like a gentleman, was well dressed, and never awkward. After dinner
he would occasionally play another rubber; but twelve o'clock always
saw him back into his own rooms. No one knew better than Mr. Maule
that the continual bloom of lasting summer which he affected requires
great accuracy in living. Late hours, nocturnal cigars, and midnight
drinkings, pleasurable though they may be, consume too quickly the
free-flowing lamps of youth, and are fatal at once to the husbanded
candle-ends of age.
But such as his days were, every minute of them was precious to him.
He possessed the rare merit of making a property of his time and not
a burden. He had so shuffled off his duties that he had now rarely
anything to do that was positively disagreeable. He had been a
spendthrift; but his creditors, though perhaps never satisfied, had
been quieted. He did not now deal with reluctant and hard-tasked
tenants, but with punctual, though inimical, trustees, who paid to
him with charming regularity that portion of his income which he was
allowed to spend.
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