this he was supported by his only-surviving relative, his uncle,
Colonel Lightmark, a loud-voiced cavalry officer, who had been the
terror of Richard's juvenile existence, and who, as executor of the
old lady's will, was fully aware of the position in which her death
had left him, and her desire that he should go into the Church.

At one of the less fashionable colleges, which he selected because
he was enamoured of its picturesque inner quadrangle, and of the
quaint Dutch glass in the chapel windows, Lightmark was popular with
his peers, and, for his first term, in tolerably good odour with the
dons, who decided, on his coming up to matriculate, that he ought to
read for honours. And he did read for honours, after a fashion, for
nearly a scholastic year, after which an unfortunate excursion to
Abingdon, and a boisterous re-entry into the University precincts,
at the latter part of which the junior proctor and his satellites
were painfully conspicuous, ended in his being "sent down" for a
term. Whereupon he decided to travel, a decision prompted as much by
a not unnatural desire to avoid avuncular criticism as by a
constitutional yearning for the sunny South. Besides, one could live
for next to nothing abroad.

During the next few years his proceedings were wrapped in a veil of
mystery which he never entirely threw aside. Rainham, it is true,
saw him occasionally at this time, for, indeed, it was soon after
his first arrival in Paris that Lightmark made his friend's
acquaintance, sealed by their subsequent journey together to Rome.
But Rainham was discreet. Lightmark before long informed his uncle,
with whom he at first communicated through the post on the subject
of dividends, that he was studying Art, to which his uncle had
replied: