 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
emphasising 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
