"You must fight your own battle, George," he said, "as I have fought mine." "Thank you, Philip," said the younger brother; "I would rather fight it any other way." And then the two men looked at each other, as they were in the habit of doing sometimes, with a singularly intent gaze. "You're very close-fisted with Tom Halliday's money," George said presently. "If I'd asked poor old Tom himself, I'm sure he wouldn't have refused to lend me two or three hundred." "Then it's a pity you didn't ask him," Mr. Sheldon answered, with supreme coolness. "I should have done so fast enough, if I had thought he was going to die so suddenly. It was a bad day for me, and for him too, when he came to Fitzgeorge-street." "What do you mean by that?" asked Mr. Sheldon sharply. "You can pretty well guess my meaning, I should think," George answered in a sulky tone. "No, I can't; and what's more, I don't mean to try. I'll tell you what it is, Master George; you've been treating me to a good many hints and innuendoes lately; and you must know very little of me if you don't know that I'm the last kind of man to stand that sort of thing from you, or from any one else. You have tried to take the tone of a man who has some kind of hold upon another. You had better understand at once that such a tone won't answer with me. If you had any hold upon me, or any power over me, you'd be quick enough to use it; and you ought to be aware that I know that, and can see to the bottom of such a shallow little game as yours." Mr. Sheldon the younger looked at his brother with an expression of surprise that was not entirely unmingled with admiration. "Well, you _are_ a cool hand, Phil!" he said. Here the conversation ended. The two brothers were very good friends after this, and George presented himself at the gothic villa whenever he received an invitation to dine there. The dinners were good, and the men who ate them were men of solidity and standing in the commercial world; and George was very glad to eat good dinners, and to meet eligible men; but he never again asked his brother for the loan of odd hundreds. He grubbed on, as best he might, in the dingy Gray's-Inn chambers. He had a little business--business which lay chiefly amongst men who wanted to borrow money, or whose halting footsteps required guidance through the quagmire of the Bankruptcy Court. He just contrived to keep his head above water, and his name in the Law-list, by means of such business; but the great scheme of his life remained as yet unripened, an undeveloped shadow to which he had in vain attempted to give a substance.