CHAPTER I.

Mr. Scarborough.

It will be necessary, for the purpose of my story, that I shall go back more than once from the point at which it begins, so that I may explain with the least amount of awkwardness the things as they occurred, which led up to the incidents that I am about to tell; and I may as well say that these first four chapters of the book—­though they may be thought to be the most interesting of them all by those who look to incidents for their interest in a tale—­are in this way only preliminary.

The world has not yet forgotten the intensity of the feeling which existed when old Mr. Scarborough declared that his well-known eldest son was not legitimate.  Mr. Scarborough himself had not been well known in early life.  He had been the only son of a squire in Staffordshire over whose grounds a town had been built and pottery-works established.  In this way a property which had not originally been extensive had been greatly increased in value, and Mr. Scarborough, when he came into possession, had found himself to be a rich man.  He had then gone abroad, and had there married an English lady.  After the lapse of some years he had returned to Tretton Park, as his place was named, and there had lost his wife.  He had come back with two sons, Mountjoy and Augustus, and there, at Tretton, he had lived, spending, however, a considerable portion of each year in chambers in the Albany.  He was a man who, through many years, had had his own circle of friends, but, as I have said before, he was not much known in the world.  He was luxurious and self-indulgent, and altogether indifferent to the opinion of those around him.  But he was affectionate to his children, and anxious above all things for their welfare, or rather happiness.  Some marvellous stories were told as to his income, which arose chiefly from the Tretton delf-works and from the town of Tretton, which had been built chiefly on his very park, in consequence of the nature of the clay and the quality of the water.  As a fact, the original four thousand a year, to which his father had been born, had grown to twenty thousand by nature of the operations which had taken place.  But the whole of this, whether four thousand or twenty thousand, was strictly entailed, and Mr. Scarborough had been very anxious, since his second son was born, to create for him also something which might amount to opulence.  But they who knew him best knew that of all things he hated most the entail.

The boys were both educated at Eton, and the elder went into the Guards, having been allowed an intermediate year in order to learn languages on the Continent.  He had then become a cornet in the Coldstreams, and had, from that time, lived a life of reckless expenditure.  His brother Augustus had in the mean time gone to Cambridge and become a barrister.  He had been called but two years when the story was made known of his father’s singular assertion.  As from that time it became unnecessary for him to practise his profession, no more was heard of him as a lawyer.  But they who had known the young man in the chambers of that great luminary, Mr. Rugby, declared that a very eminent advocate was now spoiled by a freak of fortune.