“Fortunate for you! Sometimes that sort of person fastens on to one’s relations. However, as I observed before, we’ll agree to avoid the subject. Suppose we discuss your affairs?” “I had much rather we did not.” “Of course, dear boy; but as I am candidly disposed myself, I don’t mean to be kept in the dark by the most saturnine of brothers who ever sulked in the face of an amiable relative. _You_ used to be engaged to an heiress--something in the Moorgate-Street line--Australian merchandise, wasn’t it? a Miss Hillersdon, or Hillary, eh, dear boy? There used to be something of that sort on the cards, I believe?” “There used to be, but there has ceased to be for the last twelve months. Will that do for you?” “Ah, Miss Hillersdon--or Hillary--has jilted you, I suppose?” “She has.” “And the man she has married----” “Is my very good friend, the happy possessor of a charming wife and a large fortune, and the man at whose house I dine to-day.” “Oh!” exclaimed Roderick Lowther, lengthening the ejaculation to its extremest capacity of extension--“Oh, I think I begin to understand your policy. Miss Hillary has married a rich man, and you are intimate with the husband and _au mieux_ with the wife. The husband is a sickly fellow--consumptive--apoplectic, eh, dear boy?” “The husband is something over six feet high, and has the shoulders of a lifeguardsman; and, if it were not for his dissipated habits, might live to be ninety.” “Ah, if it were not for his dissipated habits. And you are his intimate friend? My dear Harcourt, what a very transparent game you are playing! and what a consummate fool you must be if you supposed that I shouldn’t see through it! Why not a bond of union between us--all for one, and one for all, like Dumas’s musketeers? Help me to find an heiress, and I’ll help you _auprès de_ Mrs. ----, what’s the lady’s name, by the bye?” Harcourt Lowther allowed this last piece of information to be screwed out of him, and parted with it as grudgingly as he had parted with the rest. It is not a pleasant thing when you are playing a very difficult game with the odds against you, to have an inconvenient brother swooping down upon you and insisting on looking over your hand. There was no affection between these two brothers; the likeness which they bore to each other, morally as well as physically, seemed to have a blighting influence upon their relations. They knew each other, and they distrusted each other. Perhaps it would have been scarcely too much to say they hated each other. But they went out to dinner together nevertheless, and Harcourt smilingly introduced his brother to Mrs. Tredethlyn and Miss Desmond. They had plenty of time to grow quite intimate in the drawing-room while they were waiting for Francis, who came in, flushed with a hurried toilet, at ten minutes to eight. He had been absent upon one of his mysterious excursions a little way out of town.