out of his
rooms.

There were, however, many reasons,--and this was put in at the suggestion
of Mr. Barry,--why he would not wish that his brother should be left
penniless. If his brother would be willing to withdraw altogether from
any lawsuit, and would lend his co-operation to a speedy arrangement of
the family matters, a thousand a year,--or twenty-five thousand
pounds,--should be made over to him as a younger brother's portion. To
this offer it would be necessary that a speedy reply should be given,
and, under such circumstances, no temporary income need be supplied.

It was early in June when Augustus was sitting in his luxurious lodgings
in Victoria Street, contemplating this reply. His own lawyer had advised
him to accept the offer, but he had declared to himself a dozen times
since his father's death that, in this matter of the property, he would
"either make a spoon or spoil a horn." And the lawyer was no friend of
his own,--was not a man who knew nothing of the facts of the case beyond
what were told him, and nothing of the working of his client's mind.
Augustus had looked to him only for the law in the matter, and the
lawyer had declared the law to be against his client. "All that your
father said about the Nice marriage will go for nothing. It will be
shown that he had an object."

"But there certainly was such a marriage."

"No doubt there was some ceremony--performed with an object. A second
marriage cannot invalidate the first, though it may itself be altogether
invalidated. The Rummelsburg marriage is, and will be, an established
fact, and of the Rummelsburg marriage your brother was no doubt the
issue. Accept the offer of an income. Of course we can come to terms as
to the amount; and from your brother's character it is probable enough
that he may increase it." Such had been his lawyer's advice, and
Augustus was sitting there in his lodging thinking of it.

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 mig