g them with the key in his hand. "Don't be too
anxious," Julius whispered to his mother. "I will keep the drink out
of his way to-night--and I will bring you a better account of him
to-morrow. Explain every thing to Sir Patrick as you go home."

He handed Lady Holchester into the carriage; and re-entered, leaving
Geoffrey to lock the gate. The brothers returned in silence to the
cottage. Julius had concealed it from his mother--but he was seriously
uneasy in secret. Naturally prone to look at all things on their
brighter side, he could place no hopeful interpretation on what Geoffrey
had said and done that night. The conviction that he was deliberately
acting a part, in his present relations with his wife, for some
abominable purpose of his own, had rooted itself firmly in Julius.
For the first time in his experience of his brother, the pecuniary
consideration was not the uppermost consideration in Geoffrey's mind.
They went back into the drawing-room. "What will you have to drink?"
said Geoffrey.

"Nothing."

"You won't keep me company over a drop of brandy-and-water?"

"No. You have had enough brandy-and-water."

After a moment of frowning self-consideration in the glass, Geoffrey
abruptly agreed with Julius "I look like it," he said. "I'll soon put
that right." He disappeared, and returned with a wet towel tied round
his head. "What will you do while the women are getting your bed ready?
Liberty Hall here. I've taken to cultivating my mind---I'm a reformed
character, you know, now I'm a married man. You do what you like. I
shall read."

He turned to the side-table, and, producing the volumes of the Newgate
Calendar, gave one to his brother. Julius handed it back again.

"You won't cultivate your mind," he said, "with such a book as that.
Vile actions recorded in vile English, make vile reading, Geoffrey, in
every sense of the word."

"It will do for me. I don't know good English when I see it."

With that frank acknowledgment--to which the great majority of his
companions at school and college might have subscribed without doing the
slightest injustice to the present state of English education--Geoffrey
drew his chair to the table, and opened one of the volumes of his record
of crime.

The evening newspaper was lying on the sofa. Julius took it up, and
seated himself opposite to his brother. He noticed, with some surprise,
that Geoffrey appeared to have a special object in consulting his book.
Instead of