Page 319 - for-the-term-of-his-natural-life

this young man had preyed upon the world which had de-
ceived and disowned her, her heart went out to him. ‘I am
glad you found me,’ she said. ‘Two heads are better than
one. We will work together.’
John Rex, known among his intimate associates as Dan-
dy Jack, was the putative son of a man who had been for
many years valet to Lord Bellasis, and who retired from the
service of that profligate nobleman with a sum of money
and a wife. John Rex was sent to as good a school as could
be procured for him, and at sixteen was given, by the inter-
est of his mother with his father’s former master, a clerkship
in an old-established city banking-house. Mrs. Rex was in-
tensely fond of her son, and imbued him with a desire to
shine in aristocratic circles. He was a clever lad, without
any principle; he would lie unblushingly, and steal delib-
erately, if he thought he could do so with impunity. He
was cautious, acquisitive, imaginative, self-conceited, and
destructive. He had strong perceptive faculties, and much
invention and versatility, but his ‘moral sense’ was almost
entirely wanting. He found that his fellow clerks were not
of that ‘gentlemanly’ stamp which his mother thought so
admirable, and therefore he despised them. He thought he
should like to go into the army, for he was athletic, and re-
joiced in feats of muscular strength. To be tied all day to
a desk was beyond endurance. But John Rex, senior, told
him to ‘wait and see what came of it.’ He did so, and in
the meantime kept late hours, got into bad company, and
forged the name of a customer of the bank to a cheque for
twenty pounds. The fraud was a clumsy one, and was de-

1 For the Term of His Natural Life