Augustus had, in truth, been awaiting his father’s death with great impatience.  It was unreasonable that a man should live who had acted in such a way and who had been so cut about by the doctors.  His father’s demise had, in truth, been promised to him, and to all the world.  It was an understood thing, in all circles which knew anything, that old Mr. Scarborough could not live another month.  It had been understood some time, and was understood at the present moment; and yet Mr. Scarborough went on living,—­no doubt, as an invalid in the last stage of probable dissolution, but still with the full command of his intellect and mental powers for mischief.  Augustus, suspecting him as he did, had begun to fear that he might live too long.  His brother had disappeared, and he was the heir.  If his father would die,—­such had been his first thought,—­he could settle with the creditors immediately, before any tidings should be heard of his brother.  But tidings had come.  His brother had been seen by Mr. Hart at Monte Carlo; and though Mr. Hart had not yet sent home the news to the other creditors, the news had been sent at once to Augustus Scarborough by his own paid attendant upon his brother.  Of Mr. Hart’s “little game” he did not yet know the particulars; but he was confident that there was some game.

Augustus by no means gave his mother credit for the disgraceful conduct imputed to her in the story as now told by her surviving husband.  It was not that he believed in the honesty of his mother, whom he had never known, and for whose memory he cared little, but that he believed so fully in the dishonesty of his father.  His father, when he had thoroughly understood that Mountjoy had enveloped the property in debt, so that nothing but a skeleton would remain when the bonds were paid, had set to work, and by the ingenuity of his brain had resolved to redeem, as far as the Scarboroughs were concerned, their estate from its unfortunate position.

It was so that Augustus believed; this was the theory existing in his mind.  That his father should have been so clever, and Mr. Grey so blind, and even Mr. Hart and Mr. Tyrrwhit so easily hoodwinked, was remarkable.  But so it was,—­or might probably be so.  He felt no assurance, but there was ever present to him the feeling of great danger.  But the state of things as arranged by his father might be established by himself.  If he could get these creditors to give up their bonds while his father’s falsehood was still believed, it would be a great thing.  He had learned by degrees how small a proportion of the money claimed had, in fact, been advanced to Mountjoy, and had resolved to confine himself to paying that.  That might now probably be accepted with gratitude.  The increasing value of the estate might bear that without being crushed.  But it should be done at once, while Mountjoy was still absent and before Mr. Tyrrwhit at any rate knew that Mountjoy had not been killed.  Then had happened