cted. His marriage had not
taken place, and the next fatal year had fallen upon him. As long as the
inheritance of the estate was certainly his, he could assuredly raise
money,--at a certain cost. It was well known that the property was rising
in value, and the money had always been forthcoming,--at a tremendous
sacrifice. He had excused to himself his recklessness on the ground of
his delayed marriage, but still always treating her, on the few
occasions on which they had met, with an imperiousness which had been
natural to him. Then the final crash had come, and the estate was as
good as gone. But the crash, which had been in truth final, had come
afterward, almost as soon as his father had learned what was to be the
fate of Tretton; and he had found himself to be a bastard with a
dishonored mother,--just a nobody in the eyes of the world. And he
learned at the same time that Harry Annesley was the lover whom Florence
Mountjoy really loved. What had followed has been told already,--perhaps
too often.

But at this moment, as he stood in the gloom of the night, below the
porch in the front of the house, swinging his stick at the top of the
big steps, an acknowledgment of contrition was very heavy upon him.

Though he was prepared to go to law the moment that Augustus put himself
forward as the eldest son, he did recognize how long-suffering his
father had been, and how much had been done for him in order, if
possible, to preserve him. And he knew, whatever might be the result of
his lawsuit, that his father's only purpose had been to save the
property for one of them. As it was, legacies which might be valued at
perhaps thirty thousand pounds would be his. He would expend it all on
the lawsuit, if he could find lawyers to undertake his suit. His anger,
too, against his brother was quite as hot as was that of his father.
When he had been obliterated and obliged to vanish, from the joint
effects of his violence in the streets and his inability to pay his
gambling debts at the club, he had, in an evil moment, submitted himself
to Augustus; and from that hour Augustus had become to him the most
cruel of tyrants. And this tyranny had come to an end with his absolute
banishment from his brother's house. Though he had been subdued to
obedience in the lowest moment of his fall, he was not the man who could
bear such tyranny well. "I can forgive my father," he said, "but
Augustus I will never forgive." Then he went into the hous