willing,
or half willing, that Mountjoy's debts should be, not paid, but settled.
But he was willing to do nothing toward such a step except in his own
way. While the breath was in his body the property was his, and he chose
to be treated as its only master. If Augustus desired to do anything by
"post-obits," let him ruin himself after his own fashion. "It is not
very likely that Augustus can raise money by post obits, circumstanced
as the property is," he had written to Mr. Grey, with a conveyed sneer
and chuckle as to the success of his own villany. It was as though he
had declared that the money-lenders had been too well instructed as to
what tricks Mr. Scarborough could play with his property to risk a
second venture.

Augustus had, in truth, been awaiting his father's death with great
impatience. It was unreasonable that a man should live who had acted in
such a way and who had been so cut about by the doctors. His father's
demise had, in truth, been promised to him, and to all the world. It was
an understood thing, in all circles which knew anything, that old Mr.
Scarborough could not live another month. It had been understood some
time, and was understood at the present moment; and yet Mr. Scarborough
went on living,--no doubt, as an invalid in the last stage of probable
dissolution, but still with the full command of his intellect and mental
powers for mischief. Augustus, suspecting him as he did, had begun to
fear that he might live too long. His brother had disappeared, and he
was the heir. If his father would die,--such had been his first
thought,--he could settle with the creditors immediately, before any
tidings should be heard of his brother. But tidings had come. His
brother had been seen by Mr. Hart at Monte Carlo; and though Mr. Hart
had not yet sent home the news to the other creditors, the news had been
sent at once to Augustus Scarborough by his own paid attendant upon his
brother. Of Mr. Hart's "little game" he did not yet know the
particulars; but he was confident that there was some game.

Augustus by no means gave his mother credit for the disgraceful conduct
imputed to her in the story as now told by her surviving husband. It was
not that he believed in the honesty of his mother, whom he had never
known, and for whose memory he cared little, but that he believed so
fully in the dishonesty of his father. His father, when he had
thoroughly understood that Mountjoy had enveloped the property in d