ill-humour and caprice. Careless fellow as I am, I am not so indifferent, Mrs. Bounderby, as to be regardless of this vice in your brother, or inclined to consider it a venial offence.”

The wood floated before her, for her eyes were suffused with tears. They rose from a deep well, long concealed, and her heart was filled with acute pain that found no relief in them.

“In a word, it is to correct your brother in this, Mrs. Bounderby, that I must aspire. My better knowledge of his circumstances, and my direction and advice in extricating them—rather valuable, I hope, as coming from a scapegrace on a much larger scale—will give me some influence over him, and all I gain I shall certainly use towards this end. I have said enough, and more than enough. I seem to be protesting that I am a sort of good fellow, when, upon my honour, I have not the least intention to make any protestation to that effect, and openly announce that I am nothing of the sort. Yonder, among the trees,” he added, having lifted up his eyes and looked about (for he had watched her closely until now) “is your brother himself, no doubt, just come down. As he seems to be loitering in this direction, it may be as well, perhaps, to walk towards him and throw ourselves in his way. He has been very silent and doleful of late. Perhaps his brotherly conscience is touched—if there are such things as consciences. Though, upon my honour, I hear of them much too often to believe in them.”

He assisted her to rise, and she took his arm, and they advanced to meet the whelp. He was idly beating the branches as he lounged along, or he stooped viciously to rip the moss from the trees with his stick. He was startled when they came upon him while he was engaged in this latter pastime, and his colour changed.

“Halloa!” he stammered. “I didn’t know you were here.”

“Whose name, Tom,” said Mr. Harthouse, putting his hand upon his shoulder and turning him, so that they all three walked towards the house together, “have you been carving on the trees?”

“Whose name?” returned Tom. “Oh! You mean what girl’s name?”

“You have a suspicious appearance of inscribing some fair creature’s on the bark, Tom.”

“Not much of that, Mr. Harthouse, unless some fair creature with a slashing fortune at her own disposal would take a fancy to me. Or she might be as ugly as she was rich, without any fear of losing me. I’d carve her name as often as she liked.”

“I’m afraid you are mercenary, Tom.”

“Mercenary,” repeated Tom. “Who is not mercenary? Ask my sister.”

“Have you so proved it to be a failing of mine, Tom?” said Louisa, showing no other sense of his discontent and ill-nature.

“You know whether the cap fits you, Loo,” returned her brother sulkily. “If it does, you can wear it.”

“Tom is misanthropical today, as all bored people are now and then,” said Mr. Harthouse. “Don’t believe him, Mrs. Bounderby. He knows much better. I shall disclose some of his opinions of you, privately expressed to me, unless he relents a little.”

“At all events, Mr. Harthouse,” said Tom, softening in his admiration of his patron, but shaking his head sullenly, too, “you can’t tell her that I ever praised her for being mercenary. I may have praised her for being the contrary, and I should do it again if I had as good reason. However, never mind this now; it’s not very interesting to you, and I am sick of the subject.”

They walked on to the house, where Louisa quitted her visitor’s arm and went in. He stood looking after her, as she ascended the steps and passed into the shadow of the door, then put his hand upon her brother’s shoulder again and invited him with a confidential nod to a walk in the garden.

“Tom, my fine fellow, I want to have a word with you.”

They had stopped among a disorder of roses—it was part of Mr. Bounderby’s humility to keep Nickits’s roses on a reduced scale—and Tom sat down on a terrace-parapet, plucking buds and picking them to pieces; while his powerful Familiar stood over him, with a foot upon the parapet, and his figure easily resting on the arm supported by that knee. They were just visible from her window. Perhaps she saw them.

“Tom, what’s the matter?”

“Oh! Mr. Harthouse,” said Tom with a groan, “I am hard up, and