All London had talked of the affair, and all London had declared that so wicked and dishonest an old gentleman had never lived.  And now he had returned to the truth simply with the view of cheating the creditors and keeping the estate in the family.  He was manifestly an old gentleman who ought to be, above all others, dissatisfied with his own life; but Mr. Merton, when the assertion was made to him, knew not what other answer to make.

“I really do not think I have, nor do I know one to whom heaven with all its bliss will be more readily accorded.  What have I done for myself?”

“I don’t quite know what you have done all your life.”

“I was born a rich man, and then I married,—­not rich as I am now, but with ample means for marrying.”

“After Mr. Mountjoy’s birth,” said Merton, who could not pretend to be ignorant of the circumstance.

“Well, yes.  I have my own ideas about marriage and that kind of thing, which are, perhaps, at variance with yours.”  Whereupon Merton bowed.  “I had the best wife in the world, who entirely coincided with me in all that I did.  I lived entirely abroad, and made most liberal allowances to all the agricultural tenants.  I rebuilt all the cottages;—­go and look at them.  I let any man shoot his own game till Mountjoy came up in the world and took the shooting into his own hands.  When the people at the pottery began to build I assisted them in every way in the world.  I offered to keep a school at my own expense, solely on the understanding that what they call Dissenters should be allowed to come there.  The parson spread abroad a rumor that I was an atheist, and consequently the School was kept for the Dissenters only.  The School-board has come and made that all right, though the parson goes on with his rumor.  If he understood me as well as I understand him, he would know that he is more of an atheist than I am.  I gave my boys the best education, spending on them more than double what is done by men with twice my means.  My tastes were all simple, and were not specially vicious.  I do not know that I have ever made any one unhappy.  Then the estate became richer, but Mountjoy grew more and more expensive.  I began to find that with all my economies the estate could not keep pace with him, so as to allow me to put by anything for Augustus.  Then I had to bethink myself what I had to do to save the estate from those rascals.”

“You took peculiar steps.”

“I am a man who does take peculiar steps.  Another would have turned his face to the wall in my state of health, and have allowed two dirty Jews such as Tyrrwhit and Samuel Hart to have revelled in the wealth of Tretton.  I am not going to allow them to revel.  Tyrrwhit knows me, and Hart will have to know me.  They could not keep their hands to themselves till the breath was out of my body.  Now I am about to see that each shall have his own shortly, and the estate will still be kept in the family.”