be in London in December), and he
is far, alas, from having twenty thousand a year. The full enjoyment of
these luxuries, on Ambrose Tester's part, was dependent naturally, on
the death of his father, who was still very much to the fore at the time
I first knew the young man. The proof of it is the way he kept nagging
at his sons, as the younger used to say, on the question of taking a
wife. The nagging had been of no avail, as I have mentioned, with
regard to Francis, the elder, whose affections were centred (his brother
himself told me) on the winecup and the faro-table. He was not an
exemplary or edifying character, and as the heir to an honorable name
and a fine estate was very unsatisfactory indeed. It had been possible
in those days to put him into the army, but it was not possible to keep
him there; and he was still a very young man when it became plain that
any parental dream of a "career" for Frank Tester was exceedingly vain.
Old Sir Edmund had thought matrimony would perhaps correct him, but
a sterner process than this was needed, and it came to him one day at
Monaco--he was most of the time abroad--after an illness so short that
none of the family arrived in time. He was reformed altogether, he was
utterly abolished.

The second son, stepping into his shoes, was such an improvement that
it was impossible there should be much simulation of mourning. You have
seen him, you know what he is; there is very little mystery about him.
As I am not going to show this composition to you, there is no harm
in my writing here that he is--or at any rate he was--a remarkably
attractive man. I don't say this because he made love to me, but
precisely because he did n't. He was always in love with some one
else,--generally with Lady Vandeleur. You may say that in England
that usually does n't prevent; but Mr. Tester, though he had almost no
intermissions, did n't, as a general thing, have duplicates. He was not
provided with a second loved object, "under-studying," as they say, the
part. It was his practice to keep me accurately informed of the state of
his affections,--a matter about which he was never in the least vague.
When he was in love he knew it and rejoiced in it, and when by a miracle
he was not he greatly regretted it. He expatiated to me on the charms of
other persons, and this interested me much more than if he had attempted
to direct the conversation to my own, as regards which I had no
illusions. He has told me