dertake that task, very
difficult for a young man, of explaining to her all the circumstances of
the case.

But there was something in them so dreadful to the lady's imagination
that he failed for a long time to make her comprehend it. "Do you mean
to say that Mr. Scarborough was not married to his own wife?"

"Not at first."

"And that he knew it?"

"No doubt he knew it. He confesses as much himself."

"What a very wicked man he must be!" said Mrs. Mountjoy. Harry could
only shrug his shoulder. "And he meant to rob Augustus all through?"
Harry again shrugged his shoulder. "Is it not much more probable that if
he could be so very wicked he would be willing to deny his eldest son in
order to save paying the debts?"

Harry could only declare that the facts were as he told them, or at
least that all London believed them to be so, that at any rate Captain
Mountjoy had gambled so recklessly as to put himself for ever and ever
out of reach of a shilling of the property, and that it was clearly the
duty of Mrs. Mountjoy, as Florence's mother, not to accept him as a
suitor.

It was only by slow degrees that the conversation had arrived at this
pass. Harry had never as yet declared his own love either to the mother
or daughter, and now appeared simply as a narrator of this terrible
story. But at this point it did appear to him that he must introduce
himself in another guise.

"The fact is, Mrs. Mountjoy," he said, starting to his feet, "that I am
in love with your daughter myself."

"And therefore you have come here to vilify Captain Scarborough."

"I have come," said he, "at any rate to tell the truth. If it be as I
say, you cannot think it right that he should marry your daughter. I say
nothing of myself, but that, at any rate, cannot be."

"It is no business of yours, Mr. Annesley."

"Except that I would fain think that her business should be mine."

But he could not prevail with Mrs. Mountjoy either on this day or the
next to allow him to see Florence, and at last was obliged to leave
Cheltenham without having done so.

CHAPTER IV.

CAPTAIN SCARBOROUGH'S DISAPPEARANCE.

A few days after the visits to Cheltenham, described in the last
chapters, Harry Annesley, coming down a passage by the side of the
Junior United Service Club into Charles Street, suddenly met Captain
Scarborough at two o'clock in the morning. Where Harry had been at that
hour need not now be explained, but it may be presumed that