twenty, who was too lazy to take up even the easy profession of arms, which his half-brother Francis, the heir to the estate, had done.
Francis did not get on at all well with his step-mother, who, as I afterwards discovered, was an Argentine lady, and whose son Anthony had inherited from her the tendency to idleness and the love of ease and comfort, which is common to that curious mixture of European and native American nationalities called the Argentino.
Francis—who was at Aldershot—under these conditions went home but seldom, fond as he was of his father, leaving, therefore, his step-mother and her son a free "run" of the family estate.
I cannot say that I was personally struck with Master Anthony, but even in those days I had a keen eye to the main chance, and when he invited me to Yorkshire to stay with his people, I accepted, not knowing at the time, however, how matters stood with the family.
Francis, I learnt, had a good allowance from his father, and the want of money had never troubled him. As a matter of fact, I found out that he was a particularly clean-living young man—the society of women he had never cultivated, and he was looked upon by match-making parents as a hopeless bachelor.
