By this time the wretched man’s condition was pitiable, for, though his strength was still whole in him, he was persuaded that he was going to die, and could touch nothing but some rum-and-water.

“Miss Smithers,” he said, as he sat shivering upon the rocks, “I am going to die in this horrible place, and I am not fit to die!  To think of me,” he went on with a sudden burst of his old fire, “to think of me dying like a starved dog in the cold, when I have two millions of money waiting to be spent there in England!  And I would give them all—­yes, every farthing of them—­to find myself safe at home again!  By Jove!  I would change places with any poor devil of a writer in the Hutches!  Yes, I would turn author on twenty pounds a month!—­that will give you some idea of my condition, Miss Smithers!  To think that I should ever live to say that I would care to be a beggarly author, who could not make a thousand a year if he wrote till his fingers fell off!—­oh! oh!” and he fairly sobbed at the horror and degradation of the thought.

Augusta looked at the poor wretch and then bethought her of the proud creature she had known, raging terribly through the obsequious ranks of clerks, and carrying desolation to the Hutches and the many-headed editorial department.  She looked, and was filled with reflections on the mutability of human affairs.

Alas! how changed that Meeson!

“Yes,” he went on, recovering himself a little, “I am going to die in this horrible place, and all my money will not even give me a decent funeral.  Addison and Roscoe will get it—­confound them!—­as though they had not got enough already.  It makes me mad when I think of those Addison girls spending my money, or bribing Peers to marry them with it, or something of that sort.  I disinherited my own nephew, Eustace, and kicked him out to sink or swim; and now I can’t undo it, and I would give anything to alter it!  We quarrelled about you, Miss Smithers, because I would not give you any more money for that book of yours.  I wish I had given it to you—­anything you wanted.  I didn’t treat you well; but, Miss Smithers, a bargain is a bargain.  It would never have done to give way, on principle.  You must understand that, Miss Smithers.  Don’t revenge yourself on me about it, now that I am helpless, because, you see, it was a matter of principle.”

“I am not in the habit of revenging myself, Mr. Meeson,” answered Augusta, with dignity; “but I think that you have done a very wicked thing to disinherit your nephew in that fashion, and I don’t wonder that you feel uncomfortable about it.”

The expression of this vigorous opinion served to disturb Mr. Meeson’s conscience all the more, and he burst out into laments and regrets.

“Well,” said Augusta at last, “if you don’t like your will you had better alter it.  There are enough of us here to witness a will, and, if anything happens to you, it will override the other—­will it not?”