‘Well, Richard,’ said I, as soon as I could begin to be grave with him, ‘are you beginning to feel more settled now?’

‘O yes, my dear!’ returned Richard. ‘I’m all right enough.’

‘But settled?’ said I.

‘How do you mean, settled?’ returned Richard, with his gay laugh.

‘Settled in the law,’ said I.

‘O aye,’ replied Richard, ‘I’m all right enough.’

‘You said that before, my dear Richard.’

‘And you don’t think it’s an answer, eh? Well! Perhaps it’s not. Settled? You mean, do I feel as if I were settling down?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why, no, I can’t say I am settling down,’ said Richard, strongly emphasizing ‘down,’ as if that expressed the difficulty; ‘because one can’t settle down while this business remains in such an unsettled state. When I say this business, of course I mean the — forbidden subject.’

‘Do you think it will ever be in a settled state?’ said I.

‘Not the least doubt of it,’ answered Richard.

We walked a little way without speaking; and presently Richard addressed me in his frankest and most feeling manner, thus:

‘My dear Esther, I understand you, and I wish to heaven I were a more constant sort of fellow. I don’t mean constant to Ada, for I love her dearly — better and better every day — but constant to myself. (Somehow, I mean something that I can’t very well express, but you’ll make it out). If I were a more constant sort of fellow, I should have held on, either to Badger, or to Kenge and Carboy, like grim death; and should have begun to be steady and systematic by this time, and shouldn’t be in debt, and—’

‘Are you in debt, Richard?’

‘Yes,’ said Richard, ‘I am a little so, my dear. Also, I have taken rather too much to billiards, and that sort of thing. Now the murder’s out; you despise me, Esther, don’t you?’

‘You know I don’t,’ said I.

‘You are kinder to me than I often am to myself,’ he returned. ‘My dear Esther, I am a very unfortunate dog not to be more settled, but how can I be more settled? If you lived in an unfinished house, you couldn’t settle down in it; if you were condemned to leave everything you undertook, unfinished, you would find it hard to apply yourself to anything; and yet that’s my unhappy case. I was born into this unfinished contention with all its chances and changes, and it began to unsettle me before I quite knew the difference between a suit at law and a suit of clothes; and it has gone on unsettling me ever since; and here I am now, conscious sometimes that I am but a worthless fellow to love my confiding cousin Ada.’

We were in a solitary place, and he put his hands before his eyes and sobbed as he said the words.

‘O Richard!’ said I, ‘do not be so moved. You have a noble nature, and Ada’s love may make you worthier every day.’