Mrs. Bullivant was a woman of tepid affections; nature had made her so, and she could not help herself; but, in her limited and narrow way, she had always cherished a fondness for her handsome, scampish half-brother. Her own bringing-up had been of the most strait-laced kind, and maybe for that very reason she liked him none the worse on account of his faults, which--and so far one may give him credit--he never strove to hide from her; in point of fact, she was the only person in the world to whom he ever spoke frankly. As a consequence, she cherished no illusions in respect of him; she knew that at his time of life it was useless to look for any radical change or improvement in him; that which he had been and was now he would remain till the end. He had told her all about the "damnable fix" in which he now found himself, and if she did not sympathize with him, that was probably because it was not in her nature to sympathize with any one. On the other hand, she did not blame him, as so many people in her place would have done, for the reckless folly which had at length landed him in such an _impasse_. But if she did not sympathize with him in words, she did something else which was very much more to the purpose so far as he was concerned. She said to him, "As soon as ever Mr. Cortelyon's legacy of three thousand pounds comes into my hands--and I am expecting the news of his death from hour to hour--I will place five hundred pounds of it at your disposal." That had been a fortnight ago, but the wished-for news was still lacking; so now Captain Ferris was journeying down to Uplands with his sister, glad enough to get away from London for awhile, where, so importunate were his creditors becoming, it was no longer safe for him to venture out of his lodgings by daylight. Besides, at Uplands he would be on the spot when the longed-for legacy, in which lay his only hope of salvation, should drop into his sister's lap. At this time it so happened that Mrs. Bullivant was not in a position to supply her brother out of her own resources with anything approaching the sum needed to help him out of his difficulty. She had just completed the purchase of a considerable slice of freehold property abutting on her own estate, and for the present her balance at her banker's might be said to be down to zero. Although the late Mr. Flood had never liked his stepson, and after his wife's death, which occurred within a few years of their marriage, had kept him at arm's-length as much as possible, he had yet felt compelled, for the sake of appearances, to invite him now and again on a short visit to Uplands, so that the Captain was no stranger to the place and its surroundings.