"My age? I am in the prime of life. Indeed, it is time I did something to show that I could have earned my own bread all along." "I’m glad you look at it in that way," said Will, rather sadly. "Here am I, unable to earn a penny until my arm gets better. You know nothing specially of any business——" "It is not too late to learn, my lad. There are plenty of things to which I could turn my hand. Imagine what a capital keeper I should be; and how I should overawe the trembling Cockneys invited down to a grand battue into giving me monstrous tips! Now let us look at the thing in another light." He straightened himself up, as if throwing some weight off his shoulders. Then he relapsed into his old manner, and there was a sort of sad smile on his face. "Edmond About," he said, "declares that all men are producers, and have therefore a right to the property they possess, except robbers, beggars, and gamblers. Doubtless the money I possessed was very valuable to the people to whom I lent it, and they paid me for putting its working powers at their disposal. You understand?" "Yes." "I was, in that sense, a producer, and had a right to the money on which I lived. M. About tells me that I had. But, in spite of that, I was always bothered by an uneasy conviction that the ancestor of mine who brought the money into the family could not have made it by his own hands. Indeed, I am convinced that my rich progenitor—who, let us say, came over with William—was nothing else than a prodigious thief, who either stole money in the shape of taxes, or the means of making money in the shape of land, from the people who then owned it. I therefore, you see, have no right to the possession of money acquired by robbery." "You only discover that when the money is gone," said Will, accustomed to his father’s philosophic and easy way of taking things. "Not at all. I have for some time back been proud to class myself amongst the richest and oldest families of England, in regard to the moral shadiness of our right to live on the produce of gigantic thievery. You see——" "I see, sir, that the moment you lose your money, you become a philosophic Radical." "Ah, well," said Mr. Anerley, sending a sigh after his vanished riches, "I don’t think the misfortune has touched us much, when we can transfer it into the region of first principles. Perhaps I had better go up to town with you to-morrow, and see what practical issues it must lead to." "And in the meantime," said Will, "don’t tell either of the women." CHAPTER XXVI THE COUNT’S CHANCE. "Where is Mr. Melton?" asked the Count. "Up in the ’flies,’ sir, I believe," said the prompter. "Shall I send for him?" "No, I shall go up to him," said the Count.