Quote from the book "Only One Love; or, Who Was the Heir"

never have been written. If half the stories which were told of him were true, Ralph Davenant, the present owner of Hurst, deserves a niche in the temple of fame – or infamy – which holds the figures of the worst men of his day. He had been a gambler, a spendthrift, a rogue of the worst kind for one half his life; a miser, a cynic, a misanthrope for the other. And he now lay dying in his huge, draughty bed-chamber, hung with the portraits of his ancestors – all bad and filled with the ghosts of his youth and wasted old age. As it was, he lay quite still – so still that the physician, brought down from London at a cost of – say, ten guineas an hour, was often uncertain whether he was alive or dead.