His fortune would be in a very different case, he refected.

In a sort of horror, he sought to put so detestable a reflection from his mind; but it returned insistently.

It would not be denied.

It forced him to a consideration of his own circumstances.
All that he had he owed to his brother's bounty.

That dissolute father of theirs had died as such men commonly die, leaving behind him heavily encumbered estates and many debts; the very house of Penarrow was mortgaged, and the moneys raised on it had been drunk, or gambled, or spent on one or another of Ralph Tressilian's many lights o' love.