g his career finally
with a crash which compelled him to leave Calcutta and go to New South
Wales. It was in the course of these luckless proceedings, that Mr.
Amory probably made the acquaintance of Sir Jasper Rogers, the respected
Judge of the Supreme Court of Calcutta, who has been mentioned before:
and, as the truth must out, it was by making an improper use of his
father-in-law's name, who could write perfectly well, and had no need of
an amanuensis, that fortune finally forsook Mr. Amory and caused him to
abandon all further struggles with her.

Not being in the habit of reading the Calcutta law-reports very
assiduously, the European public did not know of these facts as well
as people did in Bengal, and Mrs. Amory and her father finding her
residence in India not a comfortable one, it was agreed that the lady
should return to Europe, whither she came with her little daughter Betsy
or Blanche, then four years old. They were accompanied by Betsy's
nurse, who has been presented to the reader in the last chapter as the
confidential maid of Lady Clavering, Mrs. Bonner: and Captain Bragg
took a house for them in the near neighbourhood of his residence in
Pocklington Street.

It was a very hard bitter summer, and the rain it rained every day
for some time after Mrs. Amory's arrival. Bragg was very pompous and
disagreeable, perhaps ashamed, perhaps anxious, to get rid of the Indian
lady. She believed that all the world in London was talking about
her husband's disaster, and that the King and Queen and the Court of
Directors were aware of her unlucky history. She had a good allowance
from her father; she had no call to live in England; and she
determined to go abroad. Away she went, then, glad to escape the gloomy
surveillance of the odious bully, Captain Bragg. People had no objection
to receive her at the continental towns where she stopped, and at the
various boarding-houses, where she royally paid her way. She called
Hackney Ackney, to be sure (though otherwise she spoke English with
a little foreign twang, very curious and not unpleasant); she dressed
amazingly; she was conspicuous for her love of eating and drinking,
and prepared curries and pillaws at every boarding-house which she
frequented; but her singularities of language and behaviour only gave a
zest to her society, and Mrs. Amory was deservedly popular. She was
the most good-natured, jovial, and generous of women. She was up to any
party of pleasure by wh