“Yes, he had sisters, but they were not his own, they were sisters by a second marriage. His father had made a most imprudent choice of a wife without money or connection, who brought five children into the world that I,” said Arthur, “have had to clothe, educate, and support. That is what has kept me a poor man. For thirteen years I have had that burden to carry. You cannot wonder at my being as I am. One of the boys has now got a situation, but he is only earning thirty pounds a year, and that will not do much towards keeping him. You perceive how necessary it is for me to add to my income. With my own children growing up, it is impossible for me to avoid feeling uneasy.” “Your sisters will marry?” suggested Mr. Stewart. “I do not know who is to marry them,” said Arthur, ruefully. “People do not know generally, until the right man comes,” said the bachelor, laughing. Arthur struck him as being eminently absurd. It was long since he had come in contact with a man he more thoroughly despised; but, all unconscious of the impression he was producing, Arthur went on talking of his grievances, of how badly fortune had treated him, and Mr. Stewart encouraged such talk. He wanted to know of what stuff his companion was made; and so Arthur proceeded, without the faintest idea crossing his mind that he was revealing himself all the while in a most unfavourable light; that there was not a speck, or flaw, or weak point, in his most weak character, which his host was not examining critically and cynically. Away from Heather, away from that most beautifying influence, which made even his faults seem errors, to be lightly viewed and tenderly treated for the sake of the love she bore him; away from the wife, who was unto him as a crown giving some faint semblance of man’s royalty to that poor weak brow, Arthur stood confessed for what he was—a feeble, impulsive, wearisome, selfish egotist, who had a quarrel with the world, because, while it contained rich and poor, and he did not stand amongst the former; who laid the burden of his ill-success on every back save his own; who would not look on the bright side of his actual existence, but had suffered himself to be led away after a will-o’-the-wisp by Mr. Black, and who lacked, as Mr. Stewart delicately implied to him, sense and energy sufficient to make a good thing of his life, and a good income out of Berrie Down. “You have no rent to pay,” said the director; “it seems to me you might have got a fortune out of that lovely place of yours, had you only gone to work thoroughly.” “How?” asked Arthur, helplessly. “How? why, how do other people make money out of land—make money and pay heavy rents into the bargain? Do not think me impertinent, if I say I would rather have trusted to the sense and gratitude of Berrie Down Hollow than of Mr. Black.” Arthur could not help thinking Mr. Stewart not merely impertinent but foolish, although he replied,