a rich aunt, Miss Stanbury, to whom had come considerable wealth in
a manner most romantic--the little tale shall be told before this
larger tale is completed--and this aunt had undertaken to educate
and place out in the world her nephew Hugh. So Hugh had been sent
to Harrow, and then to Oxford, where he had much displeased his
aunt by not accomplishing great things, and then had been set down
to make his fortune as a barrister in London, with an allowance
of 100 pounds a year, his aunt having paid, moreover, certain fees
for entrance, tuition, and the like. The very hour in which Miss
Stanbury learned that her nephew was writing for a penny newspaper
she sent off a dispatch to tell him that he must give up her or
the penny paper. He replied by saying that he felt himself called
upon to earn his bread in the only line from which, as it seemed to
him, bread would be forthcoming. By return of post he got another
letter to say that he might draw for the quarter then becoming due,
but that that would be the last. And it was the last.

Stanbury made an ineffectual effort to induce his aunt to make over
the allowance or at least a part of it to his mother and sisters,
but the old lady paid no attention whatever to the request. She
never had given, and at that moment did not intend to give, a shilling
to the widow and daughters of her brother. Nor did she intend, or
had she ever intended, to leave a shilling of her money to Hugh
Stanbury, as she had very often told him. The money was, at her
death, to go back to the people from whom it had come to her.

When Nora Rowley made those comparisons between Mr Hugh Stanbury and
Mr Charles Glascock, they were always wound up very much in favour
of the briefless barrister. It was not that he was the handsomer
man, for he was by no means handsome, nor was he the bigger man,