text:  It might have been supposed that he had purchased the estate of the Crown or the Court of Chancery so utterly ignorant did he appear of the age habits and whereabout of his predecessor; and when informed by Sir John Wargrane one of his wealthy neighbours that young Altham was disgracing himself again--that at the public gaming-tables at Toplitz he had been a loser of thirty thousand pounds--the cunning _parvenu_ listened with an air of as vague indifference as if he were not waiting with breathless anxiety the gradual dissipation of the funds secured to the young spendthrift by the transfer of his estate to grasp at the small remaining portion of his property