Page:The Cottagers of Glenburnie - Hamilton (1808).djvu/354

 cried Mr Stewart. "O yes, there must be some good in him. Come, he is not so bad as I thought, after all."

"Indeed there is good in him," said Mrs Mason. "He has only been led astray by vanity, and the foolish wish of being thought a great man. Had he been contented to rest upon his character for respectability, he would never have been otherwise than respectable; but his ambition to be genteel led him into the society of the showy and the dissipated, among whom he soon spent all his money; and when his regiment was disbanded, he found himself so much in debt, that he was obliged to leave England, and having met with the Flinders' at Bath, came down to this country, where he hoped to retrieve his fortune by a lucky marriage. In order to support the appearance of a gentleman, he borrowed money on his half pay; and having once been asked, whether he belonged to the Mollins's of Mollins Hall, in Dorsetshire? he resolved