icher, but
Mountjoy grew more and more expensive. I began to find that with all my
economies the estate could not keep pace with him, so as to allow me to
put by anything for Augustus. Then I had to bethink myself what I had to
do to save the estate from those rascals."

"You took peculiar steps."

"I am a man who does take peculiar steps. Another would have turned his
face to the wall in my state of health, and have allowed two dirty Jews
such as Tyrrwhit and Samuel Hart to have revelled in the wealth of
Tretton. I am not going to allow them to revel. Tyrrwhit knows me, and
Hart will have to know me. They could not keep their hands to themselves
till the breath was out of my body. Now I am about to see that each
shall have his own shortly, and the estate will still be kept in the
family."

"For Mr. Augustus Scarborough?"

"Yes, alas, yes! But that is not my doing. I do not know that I have
cause to be dissatisfied with myself, but I cannot but own that I am
unhappy. But I wished you to understand that though a man may break the
law, he need not therefore be accounted bad, and though he may have
views of his own as to religious matters, he need not be an atheist. I
have made efforts on behalf of others, in which I have allowed no
outward circumstances to control me. Now I think I do feel sleepy."

CHAPTER XXII.

HARRY ANNESLEY IS SUMMONED HOME.

"Just now I am triumphant," Harry Annesley had said to his hostess as he
left Mrs. Armitage's house in the Paragon, at Cheltenham. He was
absolutely triumphant, throwing his hat up into the air in the
abandonment of his joy. For he was not a man to have conceived so well
of his own parts as to have flattered himself that the girl must
certainly be his.

There are at present a number of young men about who think that few
girls are worth the winning, but that any girl is to be had, not by
asking,--which would be troublesome,--but simply by looking at her. You
can see the feeling in their faces. They are for the most part small in
stature, well made little men, who are aware that they have something to
be proud of, wearing close-packed, shining little hats, by which they
seem to add more than a cubit to their stature; men endowed with certain
gifts of personal--dignity I may perhaps call it, though the word rises
somewhat too high. They look as though they would be able to say a
clever thing; but their spoken thoughts seldom rise above a small, acrid
sharpness. T