“I am not going to say a good word for him.  I wouldn’t let him think that I had said a good word for him.  In order to save the property he has maligned my mother, and has cheated me and the creditors most horribly—­most infernally.  That’s my conviction, though Grey thinks otherwise.  I can’t forgive him,—­and won’t; and he knows it.  But after that he is going to do the best thing he can for me.  And he has begun by making me a decent allowance again as his son.  But I’m to have that only as long as I remain here at Tretton.  Of course I have been fond of cards.”

“I suppose so.”

“Not a doubt of it.  But I haven’t touched a card now for a month nearly.  And then he is going to leave me what property he has to leave.  And he and my brother have paid off those Jews among them.  I’m not a bit obliged to my brother.  He’s got some game of his own which I don’t quite clearly see, and my father is doing this for me simply to spite my brother.  He’d cut down every tree upon the place if Grey would allow it.  And yet, to give Augustus the property, my father has done this gross injustice.”

“I suppose the money-lenders would have had the best of it had he not.”

“That’s true.  They would have had it all.  They had measured every yard of it, and had got my name down for the full value.  Now they’re paid.”

“That’s a comfort.”

“Nothing’s a comfort.  I know that they’re right, and that if I got the money into my own hand it would be gone to-morrow.  I should be off to Monte Carlo like a shot; and, of course it would go after the other.  There is but one thing would redeem me.”

“What’s that?”

“Never mind.  We won’t talk of it.”  Then he was silent, but Harry Annesley knew very well that he had alluded to Florence Mountjoy.

Then Harry went, and Mountjoy was left to the companionship of Mr. Merton, and such pleasure as he could find in a daily visit to his father.  He was, at any rate, courteous in his manner to the old man, and abstained from those irritating speeches which Augustus had always chosen to make.  He had on one occasion during this visit told his father what he thought about him, but this the squire had taken quite as a compliment.

“I believe, you know, that you’ve done a monstrous injustice to everybody concerned.”

“I rather like doing what you call injustices.”

“You have set the law at defiance.”

“Well, yes; I think I have done that.”

“According to my belief, it’s all untrue.”

“You mean about your mother.  I like you for that; I do, indeed.  I like you for sticking up for your poor mother.  Well, now you shall have fifty pounds a month,—­say twelve pounds ten a week,—­as long as you remain at Tretton, and you may have whom you like here, as long as they bring no cards with them.  And if you want to hunt there are horses, and if they ain’t good enough you can get others.  But if you go away from Tretton there’s an end of it.  It will all be stopped the next day.”  Nevertheless, he did make arrangements by which Mountjoy should proceed to Buston, stopping two nights as he went to London.  “There isn’t a club he can enter,” said the squire, comforting himself, “nor a Jew that will lend him a five-pound note.”