r son.

"I look upon Mountjoy as utterly gone," he said.

"But he has utterly gone," his other son replied.

"As to that I care nothing. I do not believe that a man can be murdered
without leaving a trace of his murder. A man cannot even throw himself
overboard without being missed. I know nothing of his whereabouts,--
nothing at all. But I must say that his absence is a relief to me.
The only comfort left to me in this world is in your presence, and
in those material good things which I am still able to enjoy."

This assertion as to his ignorance about his eldest son the squire
repeated again and again to his chosen heir, feeling it was only
probable that Augustus might participate in the belief which he knew to
be only too common. There was, no doubt, an idea prevalent that the
squire and the captain were in league together to cheat the creditors,
and that the squire, who in these days received much undeserved credit
for Machiavellian astuteness, knew more than any one else respecting his
eldest son's affairs. But, in truth, he at first knew nothing, and in
making these assurances to his younger son was altogether wasting his
breath, for his younger son knew everything.

CHAPTER II.

FLORENCE MOUNTJOY.

Mr. Scarborough had a niece, one Florence Mountjoy, to whom it had been
intended that Captain Scarborough should be married. There had been no
considerations of money when the intention had been first formed, for
the lady was possessed of no more than ten thousand pounds, which would
have been as nothing to the prospects of the captain when the idea was
first entertained. But Mr. Scarborough was fond of people who belonged
to him. In this way he had been much attached to his late
brother-in-law, General Mountjoy, and had perceived that his niece was
beautiful and graceful, and was in every way desirable, as one who might
be made in part thus to belong to himself. Florence herself, when the
idea of the marriage was first suggested to her by her mother, was only
eighteen, and received it with awe rather than with pleasure or
abhorrence. To her her cousin Mountjoy had always been a most
magnificent personage. He was only seven years her senior, but he had
early in life assumed the manners, as he had also done the vices, of
mature age, and loomed large in the girl's eyes as a man of undoubted
wealth and fashion. At that period, three years antecedent to his
father's declaration, he had no doubt been much in