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HE conversation of the brothers, meantime, was no more amicable than it looked. Truth to tell, no great affection had ever subsisted between them since early childhood, when the mother's undisguised partiality for the son who inherited her physique, very much of her character, and the family title she had reluctantly abandoned in assuming that of Montarnaud, had sown the seeds of jealousy in the ardent Southern temperament of the elder, and had given François a certain independence and assurance of manner ill fitting him in later days to submit to the domination of a brother. Another cause of annoyance to Gaston was the fact that while himself remaining dependent upon his father's very slender resources, his title of vicomte being but an empty honor, his brother inherited, with his mother's family name and title, a very pretty little property, whose modest in come was paid directly into his own hands, and added, perhaps unnecessarily, to the independence of his manner, and reticence as to his movements. The perils of excessive riches were, however, greatly lessened by the policy of the young baron's father, who during his non-age exacted so large a proportion of