Then some idea of the old squire’s scheme fell with a crushing weight of anticipated sorrow on Augustus.  In a moment it all occurred to him what his father might do, what injuries he might inflict; and,—­saddest of all feelings,—­there came the immediate reflection that it had all been rendered possible by his own doings.  With the conviction that so much might be left away from him, there came also a farther feeling that, after all, there was a chance that his father had invented the story of his brother’s illegitimacy, that Mountjoy was now free from debt, and that Tretton, with all its belongings, might now go back to him.  That his father would do it if it were possible he did not doubt.  From week to week he had waited impatiently for his father’s demise, and had expected little or none of that mental activity which his father had exercised.  “What a fool he had been,” he said to himself, sitting opposite to Mountjoy, who in the vacancy of the moment had lighted another cigar; “what an ass!” Had he played his cards better, had he comforted and flattered and cosseted the old man, Mountjoy might have gone his own way to the dogs.  Now, at the best, Tretton would come to him stripped of everything; and,—­at the worst,—­no Tretton would come to him at all.  “Well, what are you going to do?” he said, roughly.

“I think I shall, probably, go down and just see the governor.”

“All your feelings about your mother, then, are blown to the winds?”

“My feelings about your mother are not blown to the winds at all; but to speak of her to you would be wasting breath.”

“I hadn’t the pleasure of knowing her,” said Augustus.  “And I am not aware that she did me any great kindness in bringing me into the world.  Do you go to Tretton this afternoon?”

“Probably not.”

“Or to-morrow?”

“Possibly to-morrow,” said Mountjoy.

“Because I shall find it convenient to have your room.”

“To-day, of course, I cannot stir.  To-morrow morning I should, at any rate, like to have my breakfast.”  Here he paused for a reply, but none came from his brother.  “I must have some money to go down to Tretton with; I suppose you can lend it me just for the present?”

“Not a shilling,” said Augustus, in thorough ill-humor.

“I shall be able to pay you very shortly.”

“Not a shilling.  The return I have had from you for all that I have done is not of a nature to make me do more.”

“If I had ever thought that you had expended a sovereign except for the object of furthering some plot of your own, I should have been grateful.  As it is I do not know that we owe very much to each other.”  Then he left the room, and, getting into a cab, went away to Lincoln’s Inn.