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with which he supplied his brother's exigence. Perhaps the falsity
of the position would have spurred a humbler man into the same
excess. But the estate (if I may say so) groaned under it; our
daily expenses were shorn lower and lower; the stables were
emptied, all but four roadsters; servants were discharged, which
raised a dreadful murmuring in the country, and heated up the old
disfavour upon Mr. Henry; and at last the yearly visit to Edinburgh
must be discontinued.

This was in 1756. You are to suppose that for seven years this
bloodsucker had been drawing the life's blood from Durrisdeer, and
that all this time my patron had held his peace. It was an effect
of devilish malice in the Master that he addressed Mr. Henry alone
upon the matter of his demands, and there was never a word to my
lord. The family had looked on, wondering at our economies. They
had lamented, I have no doubt, that my patron had become so great a
miser - a fault always despicable, but in the young abhorrent, and
Mr. Henry was not yet thirty years of age. Still, he had managed
the business of Durrisdeer almost from a boy; and they bore with
these changes in a silence as proud and bitter as his own, until
the coping-stone of the Edinburgh visit.

At this time I believe my patron and his wife were rarely together,
save at meals. Immediately on the back of Colonel Burke's
announcement Mrs. Henry made palpable advances; you might say she
had laid a sort of timid court to her husband, different, indeed,
from her former manner of unconcern and distance. I never had the
heart to blame Mr. Henry because he recoiled from these advances;
nor yet to censure the wife, when she was cut to the quick by their
rejection. But the result was an entire estrangement, so that (as
I say) they rarely spoke, except at meals. Even the matter of the
Edinburgh visit was first broached at table, and it chanced that
Mrs. Henry was that day ailing and querulous. She had no sooner
understood her husband's meaning than the red flew in her face.

"At last," she cried, "this is too much! Heaven knows what
pleasure I have in my life, that I should be denied my only
consolation. These shameful proclivities must be trod down; we are
already a mark and an eyesore in the neighbourhood. I will not
endure this fresh insanity."

"I cannot afford it," says Mr. Henry.

"Afford?" she cried. "For shame! But I have money of my own."

"That is all mine, madam, by marriage," he snarled, and instantly
left the room.

My old lord threw up his hands to Heaven, and he and his daughter,
withdrawing to the chimney, gave me a broad hint to be gone. I
found Mr. Henry in his usual retreat, the steward's room, perched
on the end of the table, and plunging his penknife in it with a
very ugly countenance.

"Mr. Henry," said I, "you do yourself too much injustice, and it is
time this should cease."

"Oh!" cries he, "nobody minds here. They think it only natural. I

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