who, while he was thus
speaking in paroxysms of alternate indignation and sorrow, had never for
a moment ceased to turn over his books and boxes--had accidentally
shaken a pile of tin cases from its pinnacle, and the whole rolled down
at my feet. On one of them I saw, with no very strong surprise, the
words--"Mortgage--Mortimer Castle." The eyes of both glanced in the same
direction.

"There," said the Israelite, "you have your paternal acres in your
hand--your Plantagenet forests, and your Tudor castle, all in a cubic
foot. On the chair where you are now sitting, your lordly brother sat
yesterday, gathering up his skirts from the touch of every thing round
him, and evidently suffering all the torture of a man of fashion, forced
to smile on the holder of his last mortgage. He is ruined--not worth a
sixpence; Melton and Newmarket have settled that question for him. But
do you recognise that hand?" He drew a letter from his portfolio. I knew
the writing: it was from my mother--on whom, now old and feeble, this
accomplished _roue_ had been urging the sale of her jointure. Helpless
and alone, she had consented to this fatal measure; and my noble
brother's visit to the Israelite had been for the purpose of inducing
him to make the purchase.

I started up in indignation; declared that the result must reduce my
unfortunate parent to beggary; and demanded by what means I could
possibly prevent what was "neither more nor less than an act of
plunder."

"I see no means," said Mordecai coolly, "except your making the purchase
yourself, and thus securing the jointure to her ladyship. It is only ten
thousand pounds."

"_I_ make the purchase! I have not the tenth part of the money upon
earth. I ask you, what _is_ to be done?"

"Your brother has here the power of selling--and will sell, if the
starvation of fifty mothers stood in his way. Newmarket suffers no
qualms of that kind; and, when his matters there are settled, his
coachmaker's bill for landaulets and britchskas will make him a
pedestrian for the rest of his life. But _I_ have refused the purchase;
and it was chiefly on this subject that I was induced to invite you to
my 'dungeon,' as you not unjustly term it."

The picture of a mother, of whom I had always thought with the
tenderness of a child, cast out in her old age to poverty, with the
added bitterness of being thus cast out by her reliance on the honour of
a cruel and treacherous son, rose before my eyes with suc