Mr. Ascott was sitting half asleep in his solitary¹ dining room, his face rosy² with wine, his heart warmed also, probably from the same cause. Not that he was in the least "tipsy"—that low-word applicable only to low people, and not men of property, who have a right to enjoy all the good things of this life. He was scarcely even "merry," merely "comfortable," in that cozy³, benevolent⁴ state which middle aged⁵ or elderly gentlemen are apt to fall into after a good dinner and good wine, when they have no mental resources, and the said good dinner and good wine constitutes their best notion of felicity.  
Yet wealth and comfort are not things to be despised. Hilary herself was not insensible to the pleasantness of this warm, well-lit, crimson-atmosphered apartment. She as well as her neighbors liked pretty things about her, soft, harmonious⁶ colors to look at and wear, well-cooked food to eat, cheerful rooms to live in. If she could have had all these luxuries with those she loved to share them, no doubt she would have been much happier. But yet she felt to the full that solemn truth that "a man's life consisteth not in the abundance of things that he possesses;" and though hers was outwardly so dark, so full of poverty, anxiety, and pain, still she knew that inwardly it owned many things, one thing especially, which no money could buy, and without which fine houses, fine furniture, and fine clothes—indeed, all the comforts and splendors⁷ of existence, would be worse that valueless, actual torment⁸. So as she looked around her she felt not the slightest envy of her sister Selina.
 
Nor of honest Peter, who rose up from his arm-chair, pulling the yellow silk handkerchief from his sleepy face, and, it must be confessed, receiving his future connections very willingly, and even kindly⁹.
 
Now how was he to be told? How when she and Ascott sat over the wine and desert he had ordered for them, listening to the rich man's complaisant¹⁰ pomposities, were they to explain that they had come a begging, asking him, as the climax¹¹ to his liberalities, to advance a few pounds in order to keep the young man whom he had for years generously and sufficiently¹² maintained out of prison? This, smooth it over as one might, was, Hilary felt, the plain English of the matter, and as minute after minute lengthened¹³, and nothing was said of their errand, she sat upon thorns.
 
But Ascott drank his wine and ate his walnuts¹⁴ quite composedly.
 
At last Hilary said, in a sort of desperation, "Mr. Ascott, I want to speak to you."
 
"With pleasure, my dear young lady. Will you come to my study?—I have a most elegantly furnished study, I assure you. And any affair of yours—"
 
"Thank you, but it is not mine; it concerns my nephew here."
 
And then she braced¹⁵ up all her courage, and while Ascott busied himself over his walnuts—he had the grace to look excessively uncomfortable—she told, as briefly¹⁶ as possible, the bitter truth.
 
Mr. Ascott listened, apparently¹⁷ without surprise, and any how, without comment. His self-important loquacity¹⁸ ceased, and his condescending¹⁹ smile passed into a sharp, reticent²⁰, business look. He knitted his shaggy brows, contracted that coarsely-hung, but resolute²¹ mouth, in which lay the secret of his success in life, buttoned up his coat, and stuck his hands behind him over his coat-tails. As he stood there on his own hearth²², with all his comfortable splendors about him—a man who had made his own money, hardly and honestly, who from the days when he was a poor errand-lad had had no one to trust to but himself, yet had managed always to help himself, ay, and others too—Hilary's stern sense of justice contrasted him with the graceful²³ young man who sat opposite to him, so much his inferior, and so much his debtor²⁴. She owned that Peter Ascott had a right to look both contemptuously and displeased²⁵.
 
"A very pretty story, but I almost expected it," said he.
 
And there he stopped. In his business capacity he was too acute a man to be a man of many words, and his feelings, if they existed, were kept to himself.
 
"It all comes to this, young man," he continued, after an uncomfortable pause, in which Hilary could have counted every beat of her heart, and even Ascott played with his wine glass in a nervous kind of way—"you want money, and you think I'm sure to give it, because it wouldn't be pleasant just now to have discreditable stories going about concerning the future Mrs. Ascott's relatives. You're quite right, it wouldn't. But I'm too old a bird to be caught with chaff²⁶ for all that. You must rise very early in the morning to take me in."
 
Hilary started up in an agony of shame. "That's not fair, Mr. Ascott. We do not take you in. Have we not told you the whole truth? I was determined²⁷ you should know it before we asked you for one farthing of your money. If there were the smallest shadow of a chance for Ascott in any other way, we never would have come to you at all. It is a horrible, horrible humiliation²⁸!"
 
It might be that Peter Ascott had a soft place in his heart, or that this time, just before his marriage, was the one crisis which sometimes occurs in a hard man's life, when, if the right touch comes, he becomes malleable²⁹ ever after; but he looked kindly at the poor girl, and said, in quite a gentle way, "Don't vex³⁰ yourself, my dear. I shall give the young fellow what he wants: nobody ever called Peter Ascott stingy. But he has cost me enough already: he must shift for himself now. Hand me over that check-book, Ascott; but remember this is the last you'll ever see of my money."
 
He wrote the memorandum³¹ of the check inside the page, then tore off the check itself, and proceeded to write the words "Twenty pounds," date it, and sign it, lingering over the signature, as if he had a certain pride in the honest name "Peter Ascott," and was well aware of its monetary³² value on Change and elsewhere.
 
"There, Miss Halary, I flatter myself that's not a bad signature, nor would be easily forged. One can not be too careful over— What's that? a letter, John?"
 
By his extreme eagerness, almost snatching it from his footman's hands, it was one of importance. He made some sort of rough apology, drew the writing materials to him, wrote one or two business-looking letters, and made out one or two more checks.
 
"Here's yours Ascott; take it, and let me have done with it," said he, throwing it across the table folded up. "Can't waste time on such small transactions. Ma'am, excuse me, but five thousand pounds depends on my getting these letters written and sent off within a quarter of an hour."
 
Hilary bent³³ her head, and sat watching the pen scratch, and the clock tick on the mantle-piece; thinking if this really was to be the last of his godfather's allowance, what on earth would become of Ascott? For Ascott himself, he said not a word. Not even when, the letters dispatched, Mr. Ascott rose, and administering a short, sharp homily, tacitly dismissed his visitors: Whether this silence was sullenness³⁵, cowardice³⁶, or shame, Hilary could not guess.
 
She quitted the house with a sense of grinding humiliation almost intolerable. But still the worst was over; the money had been begged and given—there was no fear of a prison. And spite of every thing, Hilary felt a certain relief that this was the last time Ascott would be indebted to his godfather. Perhaps this total cessation of extraneous³⁷ help might force the young man upon his own resources, compel his easy temperament³⁸ into active energy, and bring out in him those dormant³⁹ qualities that his aunts still fondly hoped existed in him.
 
"Don't be down-hearted, Ascott," she said: "we will manage to get on somehow till you bear of a practice, and then you must work—work like a 'brick,' as you call it. You will, I know."
 
He answered nothing.
 
"I won't let you give in, my boy," she went on, kindly. "Who would ever dream of giving in at your age, with health and strength, a good education, and no encumbrances⁴⁰ whatever—not even aunts! for we will not stand in your way, be sure of that. If you can not settle here, you shall try to get out abroad, as you have sometimes wished, as an army surgeon or a ship's doctor; you say these appointments are easy enough to be had. Why not try? Any thing; we will consent to any thing, if only we can see your life busy and useful and happy."
 
Thus she talked, feeling far more tenderly to him in his forlorn despondency than when they had quitted the house two hours before. But Ascott took not the slightest notice. A strange fit of sullenness or depression seemed to have come over him, which, when they reached home and met Aunt Johanna's silently-questioning face, changed into devil-may-care indifference⁴¹.
 
"Oh yes, aunt, we've done it; we've got the money, and now I may go to the dogs as soon as I like."
 
"No," said Aunt Hilary, "it is nothing of the sort: it is only that Ascott must now depend upon himself, and not upon his godfather. Take courage," she added, and went up to him and kissed him on the forehead; "we'll never let our boy go to the dogs! and as for this disappointment, or any disappointment, why it's just like a cold bath, it takes away your breath for the time, and then you rise up out of it brisker and fresher than ever."
 
But Ascott shook his head with a fierce denial. "Why should that old fellow be as rich as Croesus and I as poor as a rat? Why should I be put into the world to enjoy myself, and can't? Why was I made like what I am, and then punished for it? Whose fault is it?"
 
Ay, whose? The eternal, unsolvable problem rose up before Hilary's imagination. The ghastly spectre of that everlasting⁴² doubt, which haunts even the firmest faith sometimes—and which all the nonsense written about that mystery which,
 
    "Binding⁴³ nature fate to fate,
     Leaves free the human will,"
only makes darker than before—oppressed her for the time being with an inexpressible dread⁴⁴.
 
Ay, why was it that the boy was what he was? From his inherited nature, his temperament, o............