Safely hidden, safely concealed. He was not a man who wore his heart upon his sleeve. He was one who could present a smiling face while he was concocting the cunningest of schemes. He had but one view of life, the pursuit of pleasure. There was a certain similarity between him and Gerald; they were both easy-natured outwardly, but there was no guile in Gerald's disposition, while guile was the very essence of Leonard's.
"I can't very well live on four hundred a year," he said to his father, after the death of his step-mother. "You never led me to expect that I should have to do so."
"I will double it, Len," said the indulgent father; "but you are a man now, and understand things. The fortune which has enabled us to maintain our position was strictly my wife's and she had a right to do what she pleased with it. Had it not been for her money you and I would have been poor gentlemen."
"That is all very well," said Leonard, "but the reflection comes too late, father. To bring up a person in the expectation of fortune, and then to suddenly let him down to poverty, is not what I call just or fair. That is all I want--justice, and I have a right to it."
"Then you agree with me that I am hardly treated."
"Eight hundred a year is not a bad income, Len."
"But, if you will forgive me for mentioning it, father--I am a man, as you say, and can't help thinking of things--that is only during your lifetime. Heaven forbid that anything should happen to you, but we are all mortal, and down I should drop to a miserable seven or eight pounds a week."
"Gerald has the sweetest disposition in the world," said Mr. Paget; "you can always depend upon him."
"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.