Cyril and Frank in round and severe
terms, and adding some bitter innuendoes about the poverty of the
family, and their supposed expectations at her decease. Miss Sprong
lent all the venom of her malicious ingenuity to this precious
performance, which fortunately did not reach Julian until trials were
nearly over. Tired with excitement and hard work, the boy could ill
endure these galling allusions, and wrote back a short and fiery
reply:--

"My Dear Aunt--If any one has persuaded you that I am eager to
purchase your good-will at any sacrifice, and that in consideration of
`supposed advantages' hereafter to be derived from you--I shall be
willing to endure unkindly language or groundless insinuations about
my other relatives--then they have very seriously misled you as to my
real character. This is really the only reply of which your letter
admits. I shall always be ready, as in duty bound, to bestow on you
such respect and affection as our relationship demands and your own
kindness may elicit, but I would scorn to win your favour at the
expense of a subservience at once ungenerous and unjust.

"Believe me to remain, your affectionate nephew,

"Julian Home."

This letter decided the matter. Lady Vinsear wrote back, that as he
obviously cared nothing about her, and did not even treat her with
ordinary deference, she had that day altered her will. Poor old lady!
Julian's angry letter cost her many a pang; and that night, as she sat
in her bedroom by her lonely hearth, and thought over her dead brother
and this gallant high-souled boy of his, the tears coursed each other
down her furrowed cheeks, and she could get no rest. At last she had
taken her desk, and, with trembling hands, written:--

"Dearest Julian--Forgive an old woman's whim, and come to me and
comfort my old age. All I have is yours, Julian; and I love you,
though I wrote to you so bitterly.--Your loving aunt,

"Caroline Vinsear."

But when morning came, Sprong resumed her ascendency, and by raking up
and blowing the cooled embers of her patroness' wrath, succeeded once
more in fanning them to the old red heat, after which she poured vinegar
upon them, and they exploded in the pungent fumes of the note which told
our hero that he was not to hope, for the future, to be one day owner of
a handsome fortune.

Of course, at first he was a little downcast; and in talking to
Lillyston, compared himself to Gautier sans