Go on--tell me thy story." "'Tis not much, your Majesty, yet perchance it may beguile a short half-hour for want of a better.

My father, Sir Richard, is very rich, and of a most generous nature.

My mother died whilst I was yet a boy.

I have two brothers: Arthur, my elder, with a soul like to his father's; and Hugh, younger than I, a mean spirit, covetous, treacherous, vicious, underhanded--a reptile.

Such was he from the cradle; such was he ten years past, when I last saw him--a ripe rascal at nineteen, I being twenty then, and Arthur twenty-two.