His personality was unsympathetic; Lady Sue's money which he now lavished right and left, bought neither friendship nor confidence.

He joined all the secret clubs which in defiance of Cromwell's rigid laws against betting and gambling, were the resort of all the smart gentlemen in the town.

Ill-luck at hazard and dice pursued him: he was a bad loser, quarrelsome and surly.

His ambition had not taught him the salutary lesson of how to make friends in order to attain his desires.
His second return to the ancestral home was scarcely less disastrous than the first; a mortgage on his revenues as guardian of Lady Sue Aldmarshe just saved him this time from the pursuit of his creditors, and this mortgage he had only obtained through false statements as to his ward's age.
As he told his sister-in-law a moment ago, he was at his last gasp.

He had perhaps just begun to realize that he would never succeed through the force of his own individuality.