With these things in his mind—or as much of them as he could keep at once—Mark was now investigating his brother’s affairs. He would have let things go on longer, for his father’s estate was by no means wound up, but that morning Ruggles had told him that the club had had a cheque of his brother’s returned and that his brother was going out to France next day. It was five months exactly since the death of their father. That had happened in March, it was now August: a bright, untidy day in narrow, high courts.
Mark arranged his thoughts.
‘How much of an income,’ he said, ‘do you need to live in comfort? If a thousand isn’t enough, how much? Two?’
Christopher said that he needed no money and didn’t intend to live in comfort. Mark said:
‘I am to let you have three thousand, if you’ll live
