"A very expensive regiment. Leave it, Tony! And live quietly at home. Look after your father, my boy, and you won't need money," and he stalked upstairs leaving Tony aghast in the hall. Tony had to sit down and think it over before he could quite realise the fate which had over-taken him. Here he was, twenty-six years old brought up to spend what he wanted and to ask for more when that was ended, and he was to live quietly on nothing at all. He had no longer any profession, he was not clever enough to enter upon a new one without some sort of start and in addition he had a wife. His wife, it was true, had a few thousands; they had remained untouched ever since the marriage and Tony shrank from touching them now. He sat on one of the hall-chairs, twisting his moustache and staring with his blank blue eyes at the opposite wall. What in the world was he to do? Old Sir John was quite aware of those few thousands. They might just as well be used now he thought, and save him expense. Tony could pay them back after his father was dead. Such was Sir John's plan and Tony had to fall in with it. The horses and the brougham and all the furniture, the prints, the pictures and the mirrors which had decked out so gaily the little house in Deanery Street went to the hammer. Tony paid off his debts and found himself with a hundred pounds in hand at the end; and when that was gone he was forced to come to his wife. "Of course," said she, "we'll share what I have, Tony." "Yes, but we must go carefully," he replied. "Heaven knows how long we will have to drag on like this." So the money question was settled, but that was in reality the least of their troubles. Sir John, for the first time in his life, was master in fact as well as in name. He had been no match for his wife, but he was more than a match for his son. He was the fifth baronet of his name, and yet there was no landed property. He was rich, and all the money was safely tucked away in the public funds, and he could bequeath it as he willed. He was in a position to put the screw on Tony and his wife, and he did not let the opportunity slip. The love of authority grew upon him. He became exacting and portentously severe. In his black, shabby coat, with his long thin figure, and his narrow face, he had the look of a cold self-righteous fanatic. You would have believed that he was mortifying his son for the sake of his son's soul, unless perchance you had peeped into that private bar in the Tottenham Court Road and had seen him drinking gloomily alone.