ft two enemies in their way. There had been the Italian
mistress backed up by the will; and there had been this illegitimate
child. The one was vanquished; but the other--! Ah,--it would be bad
with them indeed if that enemy could not be vanquished too! They had
offered L30,000 to the enemy; but the enemy would not accept the
bribe. The idea of ending all their troubles by a marriage had never
occurred to them. Had Mrs. Lovel been asked about it, she would have
said that Anna Murray,--as she always studiously called the Lady
Anna, was not fit to be married.

The young Lord, who a few months after his cousin's death had been
old enough to take his seat in the House of Peers, was a gayhearted,
kindly young man, who had been brought home from sea at the age of
twenty on the death of an elder brother. Some of the family had
wished that he should go on with his profession in spite of the
earldom; but it had been thought unfit that he should be an earl and
a midshipman at the same time, and his cousin's death while he was
still on shore settled the question. He was a fair-haired, well-made
young lad, looking like a sailor, and every inch a gentleman.
Had he believed that the Lady Anna was the Lady Anna, no earthly
consideration would have induced him to meddle with the money. Since
the old Lord's death, he had lived chiefly with his uncle Charles
Lovel, having passed some two or three months at Lovel Grange with
his uncle and aunt. Charles Lovel was a clergyman, with a good living
at Yoxham, in Yorkshire, who had married a rich wife, a woman with
some two thousand a year of her own, and was therefore well to do in
the world. His two sons were at Harrow, and he had one other child,
a daughter. With them also lived a Miss Lovel, Aunt Julia,--who was
supposed of all the Lovels to be the wisest and most strong-minded.
The parson, though a popular man, was not strong-minded. He was
passionate, loud, generous, affectionate and indiscreet. He was very
proud of his nephew's position as head of the family,--and very full
of his nephew's wrongs arising from the fraud of those Murray women.
He was a violent Tory, and had heard much of the Keswick Radical. He
never doubted for a moment that both old Thwaite and young Thwaite
were busy in concocting an enormous scheme of plunder by which to
enrich themselves. To hear that they had both been convicted and
transported was the hope of his life. That a Radical should not be
worthy of transpo