une were to be given to him.

This had happened but a week or two before he had appeared at the ball
which celebrated young Colin's coming of age, and also by chance the
announcement of the fine match to be made of Mistress Clorinda
Wildairs. 'Twas but like him, those who knew him said, that though he
himself was on the point of making a marriage, he should burn with fury
and jealous rage, because the beauty he had dangled about had found a
husband and a fortune. Some said he had loved Mistress Clorinda with
such passion that he would have wed her penniless if she would have
taken him, others were sure he would have married no woman without
fortune, whatsoever his love for her, and that he had but laid
dishonest siege to Mistress Clo and been played with and flouted by
her. But howsoever this might have been, he watched her that night,
black with rage, and went back to town in an evil temper. Perhaps 'twas
this temper undid him, and being in such mood he showed the cloven
foot, for two weeks later all knew the match was broken off, Mistress
Beaton went back to her estates in Scotland, his creditors descended
upon him in hordes, such of his properties as could be seized were
sold, and in a month his poor, distraught mother died of a fever
brought on by her disappointment and shame.

Another story was told in solution of the sudden breaking off the
match, and 'twas an ugly one and much believed.

A wild young cousin of the lady's, one given to all the adventures of a
man about town, had gone to Tyburn, as was much the elegant fashion, to
see a hanging. The victim was a girl of sixteen, to suffer for the
murder of her infant, and as she went to the gallows she screamed aloud
in frenzy the name of the child's father. The young scapegrace looking
on, 'twas said, turned pale on hearing her and went into the crowd,
asking questions. Two hours later he appeared at his cousin's house
and, calling for her guardian, held excited speech with him.

"Mistress Isabel fell like a stone after ten minutes' talk with them,"
'twas told, "and looked like one when she got into her travelling-coach
to drive away next day. Sir John and his mother had both raged and wept
at her door to be let in, but she would see or speak to neither of
them."

From that time it seemed that all was over for Sir John. He was far
worse than poor and in debt, he was _out of fashion_, and for a man
like himself this meant not only humiliation, but impotent rag