channel.

"I hope they are going on. I trust they 'll not stop here. We have been
the great folk of the place up to this, but you 'll see how completely
the courier or the _femme de chambre_ will eclipse us now," said she,
rising. "Let us go back, or perhaps they 'll give our very rooms away."

"How can you be so silly, Julia?"

"All because we are poor, George. Let me be rich, and you 'll be
surprised, not only how generous I shall be, but how disposed to think
well of every one. Poverty is the very mother of distrust."

"I never heard you rail at our narrow fortune like this before."

"Don't be angry with me, dear George, and I'll make a confession to you.
I was not thinking of ourselves, nor of our humble lot all this while;
it was a letter I got this morning from Nelly Bramleigh was running in
my mind. It has never been out of my thoughts since I received it."

"You never told me of this."

"No. She begged of me not to speak of it; and I meant to have obeyed
her, but my temper has betrayed me. What Nelly said was, 'Don't tell
your brother about these things till he can hear the whole story, which
Augustus will write to him as soon as he is able.'"

"What does she allude to?"

"They are ruined--actually ruined."

"The Bramleighs--the rich Bramleighs?"

"Just so. They were worth millions--at least they thought so--a few
weeks back, and now they have next to nothing."

"This has come of over speculation."

"No. Nothing of the kind. It is a claimant to the estate has arisen,
an heir whose rights take precedence of their father's; in fact, the
grandfather had been privately married early in life, and had a son of
whom nothing was heard for years, but who married and left a boy, who,
on attaining manhood, preferred his claim to the property. All this
mysterious claim was well known to Colonel Bramleigh; indeed, it would
appear that for years he was engaged in negotiations with this man's
lawyers, sometimes defiantly challenging an appeal to the law, and
sometimes entertaining projects of compromise. The correspondence was
very lengthy, and, from its nature, must have weighed heavily on the
Colonel's mind and spirits, and ended, as Nelly suspects, by breaking up
his health.

"It was almost the very first news that met Augustus on his accession
to his fortune, and so stunned was he that he wrote to Mr. Sedley to
say, 'I have such perfect reliance on both your integrity and ability,
that if you assure me thi