“What uncle?”

“The gentleman down in Hertfordshire, on the strength of whose acres Master Harry is flaunting it about in idleness.  I have my eyes open and can see as well as another.  When Harry lectures me about my father and my father about me, one would suppose that there’s not a hole in his own coat.  I think he’ll find that the garment is not altogether water-tight.”  Then Augustus, finding that he had told as much as was needful to Septimus Jones, left his friend and went about his own family business.

On the next morning Septimus Jones took his departure, and on the day following Augustus followed him.  “So you’re off?” his father said to him when he came to make his adieux.

“Well, yes; I suppose so.  A man has got so many things to look after which he can’t attend to down here.”

“I don’t know what they are, but you understand it all.  I’m not going to ask you to stay.  Does it ever occur to you that you may never see me again?”

“What a question!”

“It’s one that requires an answer, at any rate.”

“It does occur to me; but not at all as probable.”

“Why not probable?”

“Because there’s a telegraph wire from Tretton to London; and because the journey down here is very short.  It also occurs to me to think so from what has been said by Sir William Brodrick.  Of course any man may die suddenly.”

“Especially when the surgeons have been at him.”

“You have your sister with you, sir, and she will be of more comfort to you than I can be.  Your condition is in some respects an advantage to you.  These creditors of Mountjoy can’t force their way in upon you.”

“You are wrong there.”

“They have not done so.”

“Nor should they, though I were as strong as you.  What are Mountjoy’s creditors to me?  They have not a scrap of my handwriting in their possession.  There is not one who can say that he has even a verbal promise from me.  They never came to me when they wanted to lend him money at fifty per cent.  Did they ever hear me say that he was my heir?”

“Perhaps not.”

“Not one has ever heard it.  It was not to them I lied, but to you and to Grey.  D——­ the creditors!  What do I care for them, though they be all ruined?”

“Not in the least.”

“Why do you talk to me about the creditors?  You, at any rate, know the truth.”  Then Augustus quitted the room, leaving his father in a passion.  But, as a fact, he was by no means assured as to the truth.  He supposed that he was the heir; but might it not be possible that his father had contrived all this so as to save the property from Mountjoy and that greedy pack of money-lenders?  Grey must surely know the truth.  But why should not Grey be deceived on the second event as well as the first.  There was no limit, Augustus sometimes thought, to his father’s cleverness.  This idea had occurred to him within the last week, and his mind was tormented with reflecting what might yet be his condition.  But of one thing he was sure, that his father and Mountjoy were not in league together.  Mountjoy at any rate believed himself to have been disinherited.  Mountjoy conceived that his only chance of obtaining money arose from his brother.  The circumstances of Mountjoy’s absence were, at any rate, unknown to his father.