"Well, let him sham. I don't think he's worth anything else." She paused, watching the effect of her words. "Oh, and you never told me what you thought of my brother yesterday?" "I think he's rather quaint." "Yes, isn't he? I'm glad you like him." "But why haven't I met him before? Don't you ever ask him down to Apsley? I never realized you'd got a brother, you know, till the other day you showed me that case in the paper." "Very few people I know do," replied Mrs. Durlacher, whereby she created a sense of the mysterious, raised curiosity and played a hand that needed all her skill, all her ingenuity. "I shouldn't have told you about him, even then," she continued, "if it hadn't been fairly obvious to me that he was becoming a different sort of person." "Why, what sort of an individual has he been?" Mrs. Durlacher told her. Ah, but she made the telling interesting. A man who owns such a place in the country as Apsley Manor, yet prefers to live the life of the Bohemian in town, shunning society, reaping none of the benefits that should naturally accrue to him from such a position, can quite easily be surrounded with a halo of interest if his narrative be placed in the hands of a skilful raconteur. Mrs. Durlacher spared no pains in the telling of her story. Led it up slowly through its various stages to the crisis, the crisis as she made it. He owned Apsley Manor, not they! It was his property, capable of repurchase at any moment! And--she leant back in her chair, covering her face with her hands as though the blow were an unbearable tragedy to her--he had said that he would take the place back. Five thousand pounds was nothing to him. He could find it at a moment's notice. So would any one, when such a place as Apsley was in the balance. "You can imagine," she concluded--bearing it bravely with the resignation of martyrdom--"what a catastrophe that'll be to us." "Poor Dolly; I never knew of that. I always thought the place was yours. You always said so." "Yes; why not? With every right. It is ours--till he repurchases. You see he's beginning to nurse ambition now. I suppose there's no doubt that he'll come up to the top of the ladder. I always knew he'd make a splendid barrister if he once caught hold of the ambition. Now, of course, he'll find that the possession of Apsley's of value to him. He'll have to entertain. A Bohemian can't entertain any one but a Bohemian. Then, I suppose, he'll marry--get a house in Town like we have--and use Apsley, as we've done, for his friends." "But, my dear Dolly--what on earth will you do?" "Do?" Mrs. Durlacher rose with a sigh. "Well--there's prayer and fasting; but there'll be considerably more fasting than prayer, I should imagine. I assure you, I do pray that he doesn't make a fool of himself and marry some woman out of the bottomless pit of Bohemia." "Well, I should think so. It 'ud be an awful pity, wouldn't it?"