There was some delay in getting Mountjoy to consent to a reply.  Before the offer had reached Mr. Barry he was already at Monte Carlo, with that ready money his father had left behind him.  At every venture that he made,—­at least at every loss which he incurred,—­he told himself that it was altogether the doings of Florence Mountjoy.  But he returned to England, and consented to a reply.  He was the eldest son, and meant to support that position, both on his mother’s behalf and on his own.  As to his father’s will, made in his favor, he felt sure that his brother would not have the hardihood to dispute it.  A man’s bodily sufferings were no impediment to his making a will; of mental incapacity he had never heard his father accused till the accusation had now been made by his own son.  He was, however, well aware that it would not be preferred.  As to what his brother had done for himself, it was hardly worth his while to answer such an allegation.  His memory carried him but little farther back than the day on which his brother turned him out of his rooms.

There were, however, many reasons,—­and this was put in at the suggestion of Mr. Barry,—­why he would not wish that his brother should be left penniless.  If his brother would be willing to withdraw altogether from any lawsuit, and would lend his co-operation to a speedy arrangement of the family matters, a thousand a year,—­or twenty-five thousand pounds,—­should be made over to him as a younger brother’s portion.  To this offer it would be necessary that a speedy reply should be given, and, under such circumstances, no temporary income need be supplied.

It was early in June when Augustus was sitting in his luxurious lodgings in Victoria Street, contemplating this reply.  His own lawyer had advised him to accept the offer, but he had declared to himself a dozen times since his father’s death that, in this matter of the property, he would “either make a spoon or spoil a horn.”  And the lawyer was no friend of his own,—­was not a man who knew nothing of the facts of the case beyond what were told him, and nothing of the working of his client’s mind.  Augustus had looked to him only for the law in the matter, and the lawyer had declared the law to be against his client.  “All that your father said about the Nice marriage will go for nothing.  It will be shown that he had an object.”

“But there certainly was such a marriage.”

“No doubt there was some ceremony—­performed with an object.  A second marriage cannot invalidate the first, though it may itself be altogether invalidated.  The Rummelsburg marriage is, and will be, an established fact, and of the Rummelsburg marriage your brother was no doubt the issue.  Accept the offer of an income.  Of course we can come to terms as to the amount; and from your brother’s character it is probable enough that he may increase it.”  Such had been his lawyer’s advice, and Augustus was sitting there in his lodging thinking of it.