beyond
providing masters for them at first, and later on sending them to
school and college, and giving them choice of professions, had left
them very much to their own devices.

True, when college debts accumulated, and pressing bills from
long-suffering tradespeople came pouring in, he would rouse himself
sufficiently to remonstrate with them in a feeble fashion, and, having
received promises of amendment from both boys, he would pay their
bills, make each a handsome present (as atonement for the mild
scolding), and, having thus dropped a sop to Cerberus,--or
conscience,--would dismiss money matters, nephews, and all from his
thoughts.

So the children grew, from youth to boyhood, from boyhood to early
manhood, with no one to whom to appeal for sympathy, with no woman's
voice to teach them right from wrong,--with few hardships, fewer
troubles, and no affections.

Arthur Branscombe, indeed, who had come back from India six months
after his father's death, and had stayed at Hythe for two interminable
years (as they seemed to him), had during that time so worked himself
into the heart of the eldest boy Dorian, and had so far taken him into
his own in return, that long years had failed to efface the fondness
of either. Indeed, now that he has returned from abroad (only, as fate
has willed it, to take his brother's place), he finds the love he had
grafted in the child still warm in the heart of the man.

Horace, the younger, had chosen his profession, and gone in heavily
for law. But Dorian, who inherited two thousand a year from his
father, and a charming residence,--situated about three miles from
Hythe, and two from the pretty village of Pullingham,--had elected to
try his hand at farming, and was at first honestly believed in by
confiding tenants, who discussed him as a being up to his eyes in
agricultural lore and literally steeped in new and improved projects
for the cultivation of land.

But time undeceived these good souls. And now, though they love him
better, they believe in him not at all. To adore one's horses, and to
be a perfect slave to one's dogs, is one thing; to find a tender
interest in the price of guano, and a growing admiration for prize
pigs, is quite another. When Dorian had tried it for six months, he
acknowledged, reluctantly, that to him mangels were an abomination,
and over-fed cattle a wearying of the flesh!

Every now and then, indeed, he tells himself that he must "look about
him,"