'I forgot to ask him where he is staying: the Brandon Arms, I suppose. I don't at all like his coming down here after Mark Wylder; what _can_ he mean? He certainly never would have taken the trouble for _me_. What _can_ he want of Mark Wylder? I think _he_ knew old Mr. Beauchamp. He may be a trustee, but that's not likely; Mark Wylder was not the person for any such office. I hope Stanley does not intend trying to extract money from him; anything rather than that degradation--than that _villainy_. Stanley was always impracticable, perverse, deceitful, and so foolish with all his cunning and suspicion--so _very_ foolish. Poor Stanley. He's so unscrupulous; I don't know what to think. He said he could force Mark Wylder to leave the country. It must be some bad secret. If he tries and fails, I suppose he will be ruined. I don't know what to think; I never was so uneasy. He will blast himself, and disgrace all connected with him; and it is quite useless speaking to him.' Perhaps if Rachel Lake had been in Belgravia, leading a town life, the matter would have taken no such dark colouring and portentous proportions. But living in a small old house, in a dark glen, with no companion, and little to occupy her, it was different. She looked down the silent way he had so lately taken, and repeated, rather bitterly, 'My only brother! my only brother! my only brother!' That young lady was not quite a pauper, though she may have thought so. Comparatively, indeed, she was; but not, I venture to think, absolutely. She had just that symmetrical three hundred pounds a year, which the famous Dean of St. Patrick's tells us he so 'often wished that he had clear.' She had had some money in the Funds besides, still more insignificant but this her Brother Stanley had borrowed and begged piecemeal, and the Consols were no more. But though something of a nun in her way of life, there was no germ of the old maid in her, and money was not often in her thoughts. It was not a bad _dot_; and her Brother Stanley had about twice as much, and therefore was much better off than many a younger son of a duke. But these young people, after the manner of men were spited with fortune; and indeed they had some cause. Old General Lake had once had more than ten thousand pounds a year, and lived, until the crash came, in the style of a vicious old prince. It was a great break up, and a worse fall for Rachel than for her brother, when the plate, coaches, pictures, and all the valuable effects' of old Tiberius went to the hammer, and he himself vanished from his clubs and other haunts, and lived only--a thin intermittent rumour--surmised to be in gaol, or in Guernsey, and quite forgotten soon, and a little later actually dead and buried. CHAPTER IX. I SEE THE RING OF THE PERSIAN MAGICIAN. 'That's a devilish fine girl,' said Mark Wylder.