‘It is a shame! How I do hate Uncle Belassis; and Aunt Celia is just as bad!—so horrid and cold, she makes me think of a snake! I hate being here! I’d rather spend my holidays at school, as I generally do; only poor Aunt Olive likes me to be here. They are so horrid to her. We did so look forward to your coming—it is a shame! Do you know why Uncle Belassis is determined to keep you away? It’s because he’s afraid old great-uncle Maynard may leave you his money, and he wants Lewis to get it, and so he won’t let you come here at all; and he doesn’t let me come often. I can’t bear Lewis. He is a horrid lout of a boy, who pretends to be grown up, and says stupid things to me. I box his ears when he does; and then Aunt Celia says, in her cold, horrid way, that I don’t know what I am doing. I’m sure I don’t care if I don’t. She told me the other day that Uncle Belassis will be my guardian till I’m twenty-four; that papa said in his will that I wasn’t to be of age, or to have any money, till then. I know Uncle Belassis made him do that—Aunt Olive is sure of it; and she says she isn’t sure that I shall get my money properly then; but I don’t understand, and I don’t care, except to get free from Uncle Belassis. I should like to be able to take Aunt Olive away, and live with her somewhere, and never see any of these people any more. It is a shame you’re not coming back, Phil. I haven’t seen you for eight years; and I can’t even remember you properly, for I was only six. If we didn’t write to one another, it would be as bad as having no brother at all. How horrid Uncle Belassis is to us both! ‘Your loving sister, ‘MAUD.’ This rambling epistle only added fuel to the fire of Phil’s wrath. ‘So that’s it, is it? That’s why I’ve been kept abroad, and never been allowed to see a single one of my own relations all these years;—lest the old miser Maynard should make me his heir, and spoil my cousin Lewis’s chance! Oh, Uncle Belassis—Uncle Belassis! I’m only eighteen—I haven’t a penny of my own—I’m a minor, and your ward, and miserably powerless; but if my turn should ever come, won’t I make you smart!’ Whilst Phil continues his impotent ravings and his wild-beast walk in his dreary London lodgings (of Uncle Belassis’ choosing), the reader must submit to the infliction of a brief summary of Phil’s family history. His grandfather, Mr. Charles Maynard, was the younger of two brothers, both men of considerable wealth, who owned adjoining properties in one of the western counties. Mr. Maynard, the elder brother, a confirmed bachelor, and a man of eccentric, misanthropic nature, was yet living and in good health, in spite of his seventy-four years, although his brother had died many years before.