Sir Horace had deemed it his duty to bring up the girl and give her a start in life.  After educating her in a style suitable to her station, he sent her to London and paid for music lessons for her in order to fit her for a musical career, for which she showed some aptitude.  Unfortunately the young woman had a self-willed and unbalanced temperament, and she gave her benefactor much trouble.  Sir Horace bore patiently with her until she made the chance acquaintance of Birchill, and became instantly fascinated by him.  The acquaintance speedily drifted into intimacy, and the girl became the pliant tool of Birchill, who acquired an almost magnetic influence over her.  As the intimacy progressed she seemed to have become a willing partner in his criminal schemes.

When Sir Horace Fewbanks heard that the girl had drifted into an association with a criminal like Birchill he endeavoured to save her from her folly by remonstrating with her, and the girl promised to give up Birchill, but did not do so.  When Sir Horace found out that he was being deceived he was compelled to renounce her.  Birchill, who had been living on the girl, was furious with anger when he learnt that Sir Horace had cut off the monetary allowance he had been making her, and, on discovering by some means that his former prison associate Hill was now the butler at Sir Horace Fewbanks’s house, he planned his revenge.  He sent the girl Fanning to Riversbrook with a message to Hill, directing him, under threat of exposure, to see him at the Westminster flat.

Hill, who dreaded nothing so much as an exposure of that past life of his which he hoped was a secret between his master and himself, kept the appointment.  Birchill told him he intended to rob the judge’s house in order to revenge himself on Sir Horace for cutting off the girl’s allowance, and he asked Hill to assist him in carrying out the burglary.  Hill strenuously demurred at first, but weakly allowed himself to be terrorised into compliance under Birchill’s threats of exposure.  Hill’s participation in the crime was to be confined to preparing a plan of Riversbrook as a guide for Birchill.  Birchill said nothing about murder at this time, but there is no doubt he contemplated violence when he first spoke to Hill.  When Hill, alarmed by his master’s return on the actual night for which the burglary had been arranged, hurried across to the flat to urge Birchill to abandon the contemplated burglary, Birchill obstinately decided to carry out the crime, and left the flat with a revolver in his hand, threatening to murder Sir Horace if he found him, because of his harsh treatment—­as he termed it—­of the girl Fanning.