George could not resist such an appeal.  He caught the hand of his brother and made him acquainted with his losses and his wants.

Francis mused some little time over his narration, ere he broke silence.

“It was all you had?”

“The last shilling,” cried George, beating his head with his hand.

“How much will you require to make out the quarter?”

“Oh I must have at least fifty guineas, or how can I live at all?”

The ideas of life in George were connected a good deal with the manner it was to be enjoyed.  His brother appeared struggling with himself, and then turning to the other, continued,

“But surely, under present circumstances, you could make less do.”

“Less, never—­hardly that”—­interrupted George, vehemently.  “If Lady Margaret did not inclose me a note now and then, how could we get along at all? don’t you find it so yourself, brother?”

“I don’t know,” said Francis, turning pale—­

“Don’t know!” cried George, catching a view of his altered countenance—­“you get the money, though?”

“I do not remember it,” said the other, sighing heavily.

“Francis,” cried George, comprehending the truth, “you shall share every shilling I receive in future—­you shall—­indeed you shall.”

“Well, then,” rejoined Francis with a smile, “it is a bargain; and you will receive from me a supply in your present necessities.”

Without waiting for an answer, Francis withdrew into an inner apartment, and brought out the required sum for his brother’s subsistence for two months.  George remonstrated, but Francis was positive; he had been saving, and his stock was ample for his simple habits without it.

“Besides, you forget we are partners, and in the end I shall be a gainer.”

George yielded to his wants and his brother’s entreaties, and he gave him great credit for the disinterestedness of the act.  Several weeks passed without any further allusion to this disagreeable subject, which had at least the favorable result of making George more guarded and a better student.

The brothers, from this period, advanced gradually in those distinctive qualities which were to mark the future men; George daily improving in grace and attraction, Francis, in an equal ratio, receding from those very attainments which it was his too great desire to possess.  In the education of his sons, General Denbigh had preserved the appearance of impartiality; his allowance to each was the same:  they were at the same college, they had been at the same school; and if Frank did not improve as much as his younger brother, it was unquestionably his own obstinacy and stupidity, and surely not want of opportunity or favor.

Such, then, were the artificial and accidental causes, which kept a noble, a proud, an acute but a diseased mind, in acquirements much below another every way its inferior, excepting in the happy circumstance of wanting those very excellences, the excess and indiscreet management of which proved the ruin instead of the blessing of their possessor.