Old Robert--who had insisted on the minutest formalities and details in providing for his dearly-loved wife--was impenetrably careless about the future of his children.

"My fortune has no value now in my eyes," he said to judicious friends; "let them run through it all, if they please.

It would do them a deal of good if they were obliged to earn their own living, like better people than themselves." Left free to take his own way, Robert sold the estate merely to get rid of it.

With no expensive tastes, except the taste for buying pictures, he became a richer man than ever.
When their brother next communicated with them, Lady Northlake and Mrs.
Gallilee heard of him as a voluntary exile in Italy.

He was building a studio and a gallery; he was contemplating a series of pictures; and he was a happy man for the first time in his life.
Another interval passed--and the sisters heard of Robert again.
Having already outraged the sense of propriety among his English neighbours, he now degraded himself in the estimation of his family, by marrying a "model." The letter announcing this event declared, with perfect truth, that he had chosen a virtuous woman for his wife.