l the world,
excepting only his father, who of all the world was the falsest and the
most cruel. As for his brother, he would bleed his brother to the very
last drop without any compunction. Every bottle of champagne that came
into the house was, to Mountjoy's thinking, his own, bought with his
money, and therefore fit to be enjoyed by him. But as for his father, he
doubted whether he could remain with his father without flying at his
throat.

The old man decidedly preferred his elder son of the two. He had found
that Augustus could not bear success, and had first come to dislike him,
and then to hate him. What had he not done for Augustus? And with what a
return! No doubt Augustus had, till the spring of this present year,
been kept in the background; but no injury had come to him from that.
His father, of his own good will, with infinite labor and successful
ingenuity, had struggled to put him back in the place which had been
taken from him. Augustus might, not unnaturally, have expressed himself
as angry. He had not done so but had made himself persistently
disagreeable, and had continued to show that he was waiting impatiently
for his father's death. It had come to pass that at their last meeting
he had hardly scrupled to tell his father that the world would be no
world for him till his father had left it. This was the reward which the
old man received for having struggled to provide handsomely and
luxuriously for his son! He still made his son a sufficient allowance
befitting the heir of a man of large property, but he had resolved never
to see him again. It was true that he almost hated him, and thoroughly
despised him.

But since the departure and mysterious disappearance of his eldest son
his regard for the sinner had returned. He had become apparently a
hopeless gambler. His debts had been paid and repaid. At last the
squire had learned that Mountjoy owed so much on post-obits that the
farther payment of them was an impossibility. There was no way of saving
him. To save the property he must undo the doings of his early youth,
and prove that the elder son was illegitimate. He had still kept the
proofs, and he did it.

To the great disgust of Mr. Grey, to the dismay of creditors, to the
incredulous wonder of Augustus, and almost to the annihilation of
Mountjoy himself, he had done it. But there had been nothing in
Mountjoy's conduct which had in truth wounded him. Mountjoy's vices had
been dangerous, destruct