“Walter, Walter! this is very sad,” broke in Lady Lisgard piteously: “you know what is Richard's manner, and how much less kind it is than his true meaning. Can you not make some allowance for your own brother?” “That's exactly what I said to _him_, mother,” answered Walter, laughing bitterly. “Here have I just got my troop, with no more to keep myself on than when I was a cornet, and had no back debts to speak of; and yet, so far from helping me a little, as Richard might easily do, by _making some allowance for his own brother_, he complains of that which you are so good as to let me have out of your own income. Why, that's not _his_ business, if it were twice as much--although, I am sure, dear mother, you are liberality itself. Has he not got enough of his own--and of what should be mine and Letty's here, by rights--without grudging me your benevolences? Is he not Sir Richard Lisgard of Mirk Abbey?”---- “I will not listen to this, Walter,” cried his mother sternly. “This is mere mean jealousy of your elder brother.” “Oh, dear no, mother; indeed, it is not that,” answered the young man coldly. “I envy him nothing. I hold him superior to me in no respect whatever; and that is exactly why I will not submit to his dictation. Here he comes stalking along the gallery, as though conscious that every foot of oak belongs to him, and every picture on the wall.” It was undoubtedly a firm determined step enough--unusually so, for one so young as Sir Richard. The face of the new-comer, too, was stem almost to harshness; and as he entered the room, and beheld Walter standing by his mother's side, his features seemed to stiffen into stone. A fine face, too; more aristocratic if not so winning as his younger brother's, and not without considerable sagacity: if his manner was not graceful, it had a high chivalric air about it which befitted his haughty person very well. When he taught himself submission (a rare lesson with him), as now, while he raised his mother's fingers to his lips, and kissed them with dutiful devotion, it would have been hard to find a man with a more noble presence than Richard Lisgard. “A merry Christmas and a happy New Year to you, mother.” The words, though conventional, had an earnest kindness, which came from the heart. Lady Lisgard kissed him fondly. “Thank you, dear Richard,” said she; “but, alas! no Christmas can be a merry one, no year a happy one, when I see my children disagree.” “Ah, Master Walter has been here before me, I see,” quoth Sir Richard bitterly, “stealing, like Jacob, his mother's blessing from her first-born, and giving his own account of matters. But please now to listen to _my_ version.”