"You needn't be so down on me, Oliver. You must allow for a fellow's feeling a little out of sorts when he's kept waiting about here for hours. I am convinced that Rosalind saw me this afternoon; I'm certain that you saw me to-night. If I had not caught you now I would have gone to the front door and hammered at it till one of you came out." "And you think that you would have advanced your cause thereby?" "Why, hang it all, Oliver, one would think that I was not your own flesh and blood! Have you no natural affection left?" "Not much. Natural affection is a mistake. You need not count on that with me." "You always were a cold-blooded, half-hearted sort of a fellow. Not one to help a friend, or even a brother," said Francis, sullenly. "Suppose you come to the point," remarked Oliver. "It is getting on to eleven o'clock. I really can't stand here all night." "It is nothing to you that I have stood here for hours already." "No, it is not." There was a touch of sharpness in his tone. "I am in no mood for sentiment. Say what you have to say and get done with it, or I shall leave you." "Well," said Francis, after a pause, in which he was perhaps estimating his own powers of persuasion against his brother's powers of resistance, and coming to the conclusion that it was not worth his while to contend with him any longer, "I have come to say this. I am hard up--devilish hard up. But that's not all. It is not enough to offer me a five-pound note or a ten-pound note and tell me to spend it as I please. I want something definite. You seem to have plenty of money: I have none. I want an allowance, or else a sum of money down, sufficient to take Mary and myself to the Colonies. I don't think that is much to ask." "Don't you?" The icy tone which Oliver assumed exasperated his brother. "No, be hanged if I think it is!" he said vehemently, though still in lowered tones. "I want two hundred a year--it's little enough: or two or three thousand on the nail. Give me that, and I'll not trouble you or Rosy any more." "And where do you suppose that I'm to get two or three thousand pounds, or two hundred a year?" "I don't care where you get it, so long as you hand it over to me." "Very sorry I can't oblige you," said Oliver, nonchalantly "but as your proposition is a perfect impossibility, I don't see my way to saying anything else." "You think I don't mean it, do you?" growled his brother. "I tell you that I will have it. And if I don't have it I'll not hold my tongue any longer. I'll ruin you."