ung man had disgraced
himself beyond all redemption; had left his home an outlaw; and had been
thereupon renounced by his father at once and forever. Having no other
near male relative to succeed him, Mr. Armadale thought of his cousin's
son and his own godson; and he offered the West Indian estate to me, and
my heirs after me, on one condition--that I and my heirs should take
his name. The proposal was gratefully accepted, and the proper legal
measures were adopted for changing my name in the colony and in the
mother country. By the next mail information reached Mr. Armadale that
his condition had been complied with. The return mail brought news
from the lawyers. The will had been altered in my favor, and in a week
afterward the death of my benefactor had made me the largest proprietor
and the richest man in Barbadoes.

"This was the first event in the chain. The second event followed it six
weeks afterward.

"At that time there happened to be a vacancy in the clerk's office on
the estate, and there came to fill it a young man about my own age who
had recently arrived in the island. He announced himself by the name of
Fergus Ingleby. My impulses governed me in everything; I knew no law but
the law of my own caprice, and I took a fancy to the stranger the moment
I set eyes on him. He had the manners of a gentleman, and he possessed
the most attractive social qualities which, in my small experience, I
had ever met with. When I heard that the written references to character
which he had brought with him were pronounced to be unsatisfactory, I
interfered, and insisted that he should have the place. My will was law,
and he had it.

"My mother disliked and distrusted Ingleby from the first. When she
found the intimacy between us rapidly ripening; when she found me
admitting this inferior to the closest companionship and confidence
(I had lived with my inferiors all my life, and I liked it), she made
effort after effort to part us, and failed in one and all. Driven to her
last resources, she resolved to try the one chance left--the chance of
persuading me to take a voyage which I had often thought of--a voyage to
England.

"Before she spoke to me on the subject, she resolved to interest me
in the idea of seeing England, as I had never been interested yet. She
wrote to an old friend and an old admirer of hers, the late Stephen
Blanchard, of Thorpe Ambrose, in Norfolk--a gentleman of landed estate,
and a widower with a gro