“He used to take as good a whack as any man I know.  The bishop hasn’t put his embargo on that as well as the hunting, I hope?” To this Harry made no answer.

“He’s in the blues, I think,” said Archie.  “Is there anything the matter with him, Harry?”

“Nothing as far as I know.”

“If I were left at Clavering all the year, with nothing to do, as he is, I think I should drink a good deal of wine,” said Sir Hugh.  “I don’t know what it is—­something in the air, I suppose—­but everybody always seems to me to be dreadfully dull here.  You ain’t taking any wine either.  Don’t stop here out of ceremony, you know, if you want to go after Miss Burton.”  Harry took him at his word, and went after Miss Burton, leaving the brothers together over their claret.

The two brothers remained drinking their wine, but they drank it in an uncomfortable fashion, not saying much to each other for the first ten minutes after the other Claverings were gone.  Archie was in some degree afraid of his brother, and never offered to make any bets with him.  Hugh had once put a stop to this altogether.  “Archie,” he had said, “pray understand that there is no money to be made out of me, at any rate not by you.  If you lost money to me, you wouldn’t think it necessary to pay; and I certainly shall lose none to you.”  The habit of proposing to bet had become with Archie so much a matter of course, that he did not generally intend any real speculation by his offers; but with his brother he had dropped even the habit.  And he seldom began any conversation with Hugh unless he had some point to gain—­an advance of money to ask, or some favor to beg in the way of shooting, or the loan of a horse.  On such occasions he would commence the negotiation with his usual diplomacy, not knowing any other mode of expressing his wishes; but he was aware that his brother would always detect his manoeuvres, and expose them before he had got through his first preface:  and, therefore, as I have said, he was afraid of Hugh.

“I don’t know what’s come to my uncle of late,” said Hugh, after a while.  “I think I shall have to drop them at the rectory altogether.”

“He never had much to say for himself.”

“But he has a mode of expressing himself without speaking, which I do not choose to put up with at my table.  The fact is they are going to the mischief at the rectory.  His eldest girl has just married a curate.”

“Fielding has got a living.”

“It’s something very small then, and I suppose Fanny will marry that prig they have here.  My uncle himself never does any of his own work, and now Harry is going to make a fool of himself.  I used to think he would fall on his legs.”

“He is a clever fellow.”

“Then why is he such a fool as to marry such a girl as this, without money, good looks, or breeding?  It’s well for you he is such a fool, or else you wouldn’t have a chance.”