He was not a happy man as he sat there.  In the first first place he owed a little money, and the debt had come upon him chiefly from his lavish expenditure in maintaining Mountjoy and Mountjoy’s servant upon their travels.  At that time he had thought that by lavish expenditure he might make Tretton certainly his own.  He had not known his brother’s character, and had thought that by such means he could keep him down, with his head well under water.  His brother might drink,—­take to drinking regularly at Monte Carlo or some other place,—­and might so die.  Or he would surely gamble himself into farther and utter ruin.  At any rate he would be well out of the way, and Augustus in his pride had been glad to feel that he had his brother well under his thumb.  Then the debt had been paid with the object of saving the estate from litigation on the part of the creditors.  That had been his one great mistake.  And he had not known his father, or his father’s guile, or his father’s strength.  Why had not his father died at once?—­as all the world had assured him would be the case.  Looking back he could remember that the idea of paying the creditors had at first come from his father, simply as a vague idea!  Oh, what a crafty rascal his father had been!  And then he had allowed himself, in his pride, to insult his father, and had spoken of his father’s coming death as a thing that was desirable!  From that moment his father had plotted his ruin.  He could see it all now.

He was still minded to make the spoon; but he found that he should spoil the horn.  Had there been any one to assist him he would still have persevered.  He thought that he could have persevered with a lawyer who would really have taken up his case with interest.  If Mountjoy could be made to drink—­so as to die!  He was still next in the entail; and he was his brother’s heir should his brother die without a will.  But so he would be if he took the twenty-five thousand pounds.  But to accept so poor a modicum would go frightfully against the grain with him.  He seemed to think that by taking the allowance he would bring back his brother to all the long-lived decencies of life.  He would have to surrender altogether that feeling of conscious superiority which had been so much to him.  “D——­n the fellow!” he exclaimed to himself.  “I should not wonder if he were in that fellow’s pay.”  The first “fellow” here was the lawyer, and the second was his brother.

When he had sat there alone for half an hour he could not make up his mind.  When all his debts were paid he would not have much above twenty-five thousand pounds.  His father had absolutely extracted five thousand pounds from him toward paying his brother’s debts!  The money had been wanted immediately.  Together with the sum coming from the new purchasers, father and son must each subscribe five thousand pounds to pay those Jews.  So it had been represented to him, and he had borrowed the money to carry out