"Depend upon him, depend upon him!" repeated Leonard, fretfully. "Is it right, is it just, that the elder should depend upon the younger?"
Mr. Paget sighed; he was not strong in argument.
"I will make it a thousand," he said, "and you must look out for a profession which will treble it."
"I'll see what Gerald will do toward it," said Leonard; and he actually went to the lad, who ran to his father, and said that poor Len must have two hundred a year more; so that subtle Leonard managed to obtain an income of twelve hundred pounds, a very fair slice of the fortune left by Mrs. Paget. He did not trouble himself to look for a profession, but carried out his view of life with zeal and ability. He spent his money on himself, but he did not squander it. He generally managed to obtain his money's worth, and he was wise in his liberality. Nevertheless, pleasure ran ahead of him, and in racing after it he came to grief, and had to mortgage his own private income of four hundred pounds to such an extent that it presently passed out of his hands and became the property of the money-lenders. His father and half-brother never failed him; they were living quietly and modestly in England, and every appeal Leonard made to them was promptly and affectionately responded to. He was not thankful for the assistance; there gathers upon some natures a crust of selfishness so thick as to deaden the sentiment of gratitude for kindness rendered.
Thus matters went on till the father died. Leonard, as has been stated, was in Australia at the time. It was not a spirit of enterprise that took him there, nor any idea of business; he was enamoured of a pretty face, and he followed, or accompanied it, to the antipodes--it matters not which. When he received news of his father's death, the enchantment was over, and another chapter in his book of selfish pleasures was closed. He cabled home for money. Gerald cabled him back a thousand pounds. "By jove," thought Leonard; "he must be richer than I thought." It was so. Mr. Paget had saved half his income and had invested it well, so that, upon his death, Gerald found himself in possession of a handsome sum of money in addition to the income which now fell to his share. Leonard remained in Australia long enough to spend three-fourths of the thousand pounds--it did not take long--and then he took ship to England, with the firm resolve to milk his cow, his half-brother Gerald, who received him with open arms. But between the day of Mr. Paget's death and the day of Leonard's return to England, Gerald met Emilia Braham. That made all the difference.
[CHAPTER XXIII.]
TWO HEARTS THAT BEAT AS ONE.
There is no position in the world more cruel than that of a young girl, born in a good condition of life and delicately brought up, who suddenly finds herself bereft of means, of home, of love. Into this position was Emilia Braham thrust on the day her father was carried dead to the house in which he and his only child had passed many happy years. A scaffolding, loosely constructed, had given way as he passed beneath it, and he lay under the ruins with the life crushed out of him.
It had been a home of love, and the anxieties of the father had not been shared by the gentle, beautiful girl whose presence brightened it, whose pure spirit sanctified it. For it was indeed a sanctuary to the loving father, whose only aim had been to provide for his daughter, so that she might be spared the pangs which poverty brings in its train. In this endeavor he would almost certainly have succeeded had he been spared; but the fatal accident nipped his hopes in the bud, and she was left penniless and alone. Mr. Braham had kept up his head, as the saying is, and none who knew him had any idea of the clever manœuvring he had practised to keep him and his daughter from falling out of the ranks in which they had moved all their lives. A rash speculation had brought him to this pass, and for years he had been struggling to extricate himself from its consequences. Another year and all would have been well; but death came too soon, and his daughter lived to reap what he had sown.
Even the home had to be sold to satisfy the creditors, and when this was done Emilia, a child of eighteen, faced the world with a shrinking heart. She had in her purse barely £5; the few trinkets she had possessed had been sold; she had set great store upon them, and was amazed to discover that their value was so small. For the last, last time she walked through the familiar rooms, and touched the walls, and knelt by her bed; and then she crept out of the house and proceeded to the two rooms she had taken in a street hard by. It would have quite broken her heart to go out of the neighborhood in which she and her dear father had lived.