Who should walk in, with his usual disregard to the exigencies of ceremonious life, but Roland! Gerald stared in utter astonishment; and, when satisfied that it was in truth his brother, frowned awfully. Gerald in his high sphere might find it difficult to get along; but to have an elder brother who was so down in the world as to accept any common employment that offered, and put up with one room and a turn-up bedstead, and not scruple to own it, was a very different matter. And Gerald's intention was to wash his hands of Roland and his low surroundings, as entirely as Sir Richard Yorke could do. Roland took a survey of things in general, and saluted his brother with off-hand cordiality. He knew his presence there was unacceptable, but in his good-nature would not appear to remember it. The handsome rooms, lacking no signs of wealth and comfort, the preparations for the entertainment that peeped out here and there, Gerald himself (as Roland would have expressed it) in full fig; all seemed to denote that life was sunny in this quarter, and Roland thought it was fine to be Gerald. Gerald slowly extended one unwilling finger in response to Roland's offered grasp, and waited for him to explain his business, not inviting him to sit. It was not he that would allow Roland to think he might be a visitor there at will. Roland, however, put himself into a comfortable velvet lounging-chair of his own accord, as easily as he might have put himself into the old horsehair thing at Mrs. Jones's: and then proceeded to tell his errand. It was this. Upon going home that night at seven--for he had to stay late in the office to make up for the time lost at Mrs. Bede's kettle-drum--Roland found a letter from Lord Carrick, who was in the shade still. Amidst some personal matters, it contained a confidential message for Gerald, which Roland was charged to deliver in person. This was no other than a reminder to Gerald that a certain pecuniary obligation for which he and Lord Carrick were equally responsible (the latter having made himself so, to accommodate Gerald, but receiving no benefit) was becoming due, and that Gerald would have to meet it. "Tell him, my boy, that I'd willingly find the means for him if I could, and as much more at the back of it," wrote the good-natured peer; "but I'm regularly out of everything for the time being, and _can't_." It may be easily conceived that the errand, when explained, did not tend to increase Roland's welcome. Gerald bit his full lips with suppressed passion, and could willingly have struck his brother. Vincent Yorke, perhaps as an ostensible plea for not responding in kind to Gerald's application for the loan of twenty pounds that day, said they might have to lose forty-four, and had disclosed to him the particulars of the appropriated cheque, adding that he should think suspicion must lie on someone of the four clerks in Bede Greatorex's office. That was quite enough for Gerald.