Taking up
the review, Hubert glanced over the article a second time. 'How anxious the
fellows are for me to achieve a success! How they believe in me! They
desire it more than I do. They believe in me more than I do in myself. They
want to applaud me. They are hungry for the masterpiece.'

At that moment his eye was caught by some letters written on blue paper.
His face resumed a wearied and hunted expression. 'There's no doubt about
it, money I must get somehow. I am running it altogether too fine. There
isn't twenty pounds between me and the deep sea.'

* * * * *

He was the son of the Rev. James Price, a Shropshire clergyman. The family
was of Welsh extraction, but in Hubert none of the physical characteristics
of the Celt appeared. He might have been selected as a typical Anglo-Saxon.
The face was long and pale, and he wore a short reddish beard; the eyes
were light blue, verging on grey, and they seemed to speak a quiet,
steadfast soul. Hubert had always been his mother's favourite, and the
scorn of his elder brothers, two rough boys, addicted in early youth to
robbing orchards, and later on to gambling and drinking. The elder, after
having broken his father's heart with debts and disgraceful living, had
gone out to the Cape. News of his death came to the Rectory soon after; but
James's death did not turn Henry from his evil courses, and one day his
father and mother had to go to London on his account, and they brought him
back a hopeless invalid. Hubert was twelve years of age when he followed
his brother to the grave.

It was at his brother's funeral that Hubert met for the first time his
uncle, Mr. Burnett. Mr. Burnett had spent the greater part of his life in
New Zealand, where he had made a large fortune by sheep-farming and
investments in land. He had seemed to be greatly taken with his nephew, and
for many years it was understood that he would leave him the greater part,
if not the whole, of his fortune. But Mr. Burnett had come under the
influence of some poor relations, some distant cousins, the Watsons, and
had eventually decided to adopt their daughter Emily and leave her his
fortune. He did not dare intimate his change of mind to his sister; but the
news having reached Mrs. Price in various rumours, she wrote to her brother
asking him to confirm or deny these rumours; and when he admitted their
truth, Mrs. Price never spoke to him again. She was a determined woman, and