Then when you are tired of the occupation you can come back to me.”  It was thus that Annesley had been wont to address his friend.  But his friend had been anxious to talk down this special young man for special purposes, and had been conscious of some weakness in the other’s character which he thought entitled him to do so.  But the weakness was not of that nature, and he had failed.  Then had come the rivalry between Mountjoy and Harry, which had seemed to Augustus to be the extreme of impudence.  From of old he had been taught to regard his brother Mountjoy as the first of young men—­among commoners; the first in prospects and the first in rank; and to him Florence Mountjoy had been allotted as a bride.  How he had himself learned first to envy and then to covet this allotted bride need not here be told.  But by degrees it had come to pass that Augustus had determined that his spendthrift brother should fall under his own power, and that the bride should be the reward.  How it was that two brothers, so different in character, and yet so alike in their selfishness, should have come to love the same girl with a true intensity of purpose, and that Harry Annesley, whose character was essentially different, and who was in no degree selfish, should have loved her also, must be left to explain itself as the girl’s character shall be developed.  But Florence Mountjoy had now for many months been the cause of bitter dislike against poor Harry in the mind of Augustus Scarborough.  He understood much more clearly than his brother had done who it was that the girl really preferred.  He was ever conscious, too, of his own superiority,—­falsely conscious,—­and did feel that if Harry’s character were really known, no girl would in truth prefer him.  He could not quite see Harry with Florence’s eyes nor could he see himself with any other eyes but his own.

Then had come the meeting between Mountjoy and Harry Annesley in the street, of which he had only such garbled account as Mountjoy himself had given him within half an hour afterward.  From that story, told in the words of a drunken man,—­a man drunk, and bruised, and bloody, who clearly did not understand in one minute the words spoken in the last,—­Augustus did learn that there had been some great row between his brother and Harry Annesley.  Then Mountjoy had disappeared,—­had disappeared, as the reader will have understood, with his brother’s co-operation,—­and Harry had not come forward, when inquiries were made, to declare what he knew of the occurrences of that night.  Augustus had narrowly watched his conduct, in order at first that he might learn in what condition his brother had been left in the street, but afterward with the purpose of ascertaining why it was that Harry had been so reticent.  Then he had allured Harry on to a direct lie, and soon perceived that he could afterward use the secret for his own purpose.

“I think we shall have to see what that young man’s about, you know,” he said afterward to Septimus Jones.