grew was perfectly entitled to
account pirate raids. He had returned with enough plunder in specie and
gems to disencumber the Tressilian patrimony. He had sailed again and
returned still wealthier. And meanwhile, Lionel had remained at home
taking his ease. He loved his ease. His nature was inherently indolent,
and he had the wasteful extravagant tastes that usually go with
indolence. He was not born to toil and struggle, and none had sought to
correct the shortcomings of his character in that respect. Sometimes he
wondered what the future might hold for him should Oliver come to marry.
He feared his life might not be as easy as it was at present. But he did
not seriously fear. It was not in his nature--it never is in the natures
of such men--to give any excess of consideration to the future. When
his thoughts did turn to it in momentary uneasiness, he would abruptly
dismiss them with the reflection that when all was said Oliver loved
him, and Oliver would never fail to provide adequately for all his
wants.

In this undoubtedly he was fully justified. Oliver was more parent than
brother to him. When their father had been brought home to die from the
wound dealt him by an outraged husband--and a shocking spectacle that
sinner's death had been with its hasty terrified repentance--he had
entrusted Lionel to his elder brother's care. At the time Oliver was
seventeen and Lionel twelve. But Oliver had seemed by so many years
older than his age, that the twice-widowed Ralph Tressilian had come
to depend upon this steady, resolute, and masterful child of his first
marriage. It was into his ear that the dying man had poured the wretched
tale of his repentance for the life he had lived and the state in which
he was leaving his affairs with such scant provision for his sons. For
Oliver he had no fear. It was as if with the prescience that comes
to men in his pass he had perceived that Oliver was of those who must
prevail, a man born to make the world his oyster. His anxieties were
all for Lionel, whom he also judged with that same penetrating insight
vouchsafed a man in his last hours. Hence his piteous recommendation
of him to Oliver, and Oliver's ready promise to be father, mother, and
brother to the youngster.

All this was in Lionel's mind as he sat musing there, and again he
struggled with that hideous insistent thought that if things should
go ill with his brother at Arwenack, there would be great profit to
himself; that