ehaved very badly to Alice, and the match had
been broken off.

He had also during the last two years quarrelled with his
grandfather. He had wished to raise a sum of money on the Vavasor
estate, which, as it was unentailed, he could only do with his
grandfather's concurrence. The old gentleman would not hear of
it,--would listen with no patience to the proposition. It was in
vain that George attempted to make the squire understand that the
wine business was going on very well, that he himself owed no man
anything, that everything with him was flourishing;--but that his
trade might be extended indefinitely by the use of a few thousand
pounds at moderate interest. Old Mr Vavasor was furious. No documents
and no assurances could make him lay aside a belief that the wine
merchants, and the business, and his grandson were all ruined and
ruinous together. No one but a ruined man would attempt to raise
money on the family estate! So they had quarrelled, and had never
spoken or seen each other since. "He shall have the estate for his
life," the squire said to his son John. "I don't think I have a right
to leave it away from him. It never has been left away from the heir.
But I'll tie it up so that he shan't cut a tree on it." John Vavasor
perhaps thought that the old rule of primogeniture might under such
circumstances have been judiciously abandoned--in this one instance,
in his own favour. But he did not say so. Nor would he have said it
had there been a chance of his doing so with success. He was a man
from whom no very noble deed could be expected; but he was also one
who would do no ignoble deed.

After that George Vavasor had become a stockbroker, and a stockbroker
he was now. In the first twelve months after his leaving the wine
business,--the same being the first year after his breach with
Alice,--he had gone back greatly in the estimation of men. He had
lived in open defiance of decency. He had spent much money and had
apparently made none, and had been, as all his friends declared, on
the high road to ruin. Aunt Macleod had taken her judgement from this
period of his life when she had spoken of him as a man who never did
anything. But he had come forth again suddenly as a working man; and
now they who professed to know, declared that he was by no means
poor. He was in the City every day; and during the last two years had
earned the character of a shrewd fellow who knew what he was about,
who might not perhaps be v