Perhaps because he knew he was by nature inclining to the
parsimonious, he took a backforemost pleasure in the recklessness
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;