the day of the dinner, distressing
circumstances strengthened his resolution. After months of separation,
he received a visit from Herbert.

Was this man--haggard, pallid, shabby, looking at him piteously with
bloodshot eyes--the handsome, pleasant, prosperous brother whom he
remembered? Randal was so grieved, that he was for a moment unable to
utter a word. He could only point to a seat. Herbert dropped into the
chair as if he was reduced to the last extremity of fatigue. And yet he
spoke roughly; he looked like an angry man brought to bay.

"I seem to frighten you," he said.

"You distress me, Herbert, more than words can say."

"Give me a glass of wine. I've been walking--I don't know where. A long
distance; I'm dead beat."

He drank the wine greedily. Whatever reviving effect it might otherwise
have produced on him, it made no change in the threatening gloom of
his manner. In a man morally weak, calamity (suffered without resisting
power) breaks its way through the surface which exhibits a gentleman,
and shows the naked nature which claims kindred with our ancestor the
savage.

"Do you feel better, Herbert?"

He put down the empty glass, taking no notice of his brother's question.
"Randal," he said, "you know where Sydney is."

Randal admitted it.

"Give me her address. My mind's in such a state I can't remember it;
write it down."

"No, Herbert."

"You won't write it? and you won't give it?"

"I will do neither the one nor the other. Go back to your chair; fierce
looks and clinched fists don't frighten me. Miss Westerfield is quite
right in separating herself from you. And you are quite wrong in wishing
to go back to her. There are my reasons. Try to understand them. And,
once again, sit down."

He spoke sternly--with his heart aching for his brother all the time.
He was right. The one way is the positive way, when a man who suffers
trouble is degraded by it.

The poor wretch sank under Randal's firm voice and steady eye.

"Don't be hard on me," he said. "I think a man in my situation is to be
pitied--especially by his brother. I'm not like you; I'm not accustomed
to live alone. I've been accustomed to having a kind woman to talk to
me, and take care of me. You don't know what it is to be used to
seeing a pretty creature, always nicely dressed, always about the
room--thinking so much of you, and so little of herself--and then to be
left alone as I am left, out in the dark. I haven't got my wife;