The young man, on coming of age, acquired control of the whole of his father's property, and soon started on a career of extravagance and debauchery. His mother, however, retained some influence over him, and persuaded him, a year later, before he had had time to dissipate the whole of his inheritance, to return with her to England, hoping that the moral effect of a change from the gaol-bird atmosphere of felony that hung over the whole land of his birth would develop whatever germ of honour or right feeling he possessed.
She was not very sanguine, for his boyhood had been a cruel affliction to her. And the results showed that whatever hopes she had entertained were ill-founded. Arrived in London, with money still at command, he plunged at once into all the dissipations of the town, and it became evident that in the course of a year or so he would run through the remainder of his patrimony.
About this time he met with an experience which now and then happens to men of his class. He fell violently in love--or in what he called love--with a girl who had very distinct ideas on the subject of marriage. One was that the first arrangement of their relations which suggested themselves to her lover were not to be entertained, and therefore she refused to entertain them. He tried ridicule, indignation, and protestation--all in vain! She appeared not to object to persecution--rather liked it. But she held out no hopes except legitimate ones. At last, when the young man was in a sense desperate--not in a very noble sense, but desperate for all that--she intimated to him that, unless he was prepared to accept her scheme of life, she knew a very respectable young man who was; a young man in Smithfield Market with whom she had walked out, and you could never have told. Which means that this young man disguised himself so subtly on Sunday to go into Society, that none would have guessed that he passed the week in contact with grease and blood, and dared to twist the tails of bullocks in revolt against their fate, shrinking naturally from the axe. His intentions were, nevertheless, honourable, and Polly, the barmaid at the One Tun Inn, honoured them, while her affections were disposed towards her Australian suitor whose intentions were not. The young reprobate, however, had to climb down; but he made his surrender conditional on one thing--that his marriage with Polly should remain a secret. No doubt parallel enterprises would have been interrupted by its publication. Anyhow, his mother never knew of his marriage, nor set eyes on her daughter-in-law.