The professor is silent, more through disgust than want of anything to say. Staring at the man before him, he knows he is loathsome to him--loathsome, and his own brother! This man, who with some of the best blood of England in his veins, is so far, far below the standard that marks the gentleman. Surely vice is degrading in more ways than one. To the professor, Sir Hastings, with his handsome, dissipated face, stands out, tawdry, hideous, vulgar--why, every word he says is tinged with coarseness; and yet, what a pretty boy he used to be, with his soft, sunny hair and laughing eyes---- "You will help me, eh?" persists Sir Hastings, with his little dry chronic cough, that seems to shake his whole frame. "Impossible," says the professor, simply, coldly. "_No?_ Why?" The professor looks at him (a penetrating glance), but says nothing. "Oh! damn it all!" says his brother, his brow darkening. "You had _better_, you know, if you want the old name kept above water much longer." "You mean----?" says the professor, turning a grave face to his. "Nothing but what is honorable. I tell you I mean to turn over a new leaf. 'Pon my soul, I mean _that_. I'm sick of all this old racket, it's killing me. And my title is as good a one as she can find anywhere, and if I'm dipped--rather--her money would pull me straight again, and----" He pauses, struck by something in the professor's face. "You mean----?" says the latter again, even more slowly. His eyes are beginning to light. "Exactly what I have said," sullenly. "You have heard me." "Yes, I _have_ heard you," cries the professor, flinging aside all restraints and giving way to sudden violent passion--the more violent, coming from one so usually calm and indifferent. "You have come here to-day to try and get possession, not only of the fortune of a young and innocent girl, but of her body and _soul_ as well! And it is me, _me_ whom you ask to be a party to this shameful transaction. Her dead father left her to my care, and I am to sell her to you, that her money may redeem our name from the slough into which _you_ have flung it? Is innocence to be sacrificed that vice may ride abroad again? Look here," says the professor, his face deadly white, "you have come to the wrong man. I shall warn Miss Wynter against marriage with _you_, as long as there is breath left in my body." Sir Hastings has risen too; _his_ face is dark red; the crimson flood has reached his forehead and dyed it almost black. Now, at this terrible moment, the likeness between the two brothers, so different in spirit, can be seen; the flashing-eyes, the scornful lips, the deadly hatred. It is a shocking likeness, yet not to be denied. "What do _you_ mean, damn you?" says Sir Hastings; he sways a little, as if his passion is overpowering him, and clutches feebly at the edge of the table. "Exactly what _I_ have said," retorts the professor, fiercely. "You refuse then to go with me in this matter?"