“The property is certainly entailed,” said Mrs. Mountjoy.  He had called at once at the house and saw the mother, but Florence was discreetly sent away to her own room when the dangerous young man was admitted.

“He is not Mr. Scarborough’s eldest son at all,” said Harry; “that is, in the eye of the law.”  Then he had to undertake that task, very difficult for a young man, of explaining to her all the circumstances of the case.

But there was something in them so dreadful to the lady’s imagination that he failed for a long time to make her comprehend it.  “Do you mean to say that Mr. Scarborough was not married to his own wife?”

“Not at first.”

“And that he knew it?”

“No doubt he knew it.  He confesses as much himself.”

“What a very wicked man he must be!” said Mrs. Mountjoy.  Harry could only shrug his shoulder.  “And he meant to rob Augustus all through?” Harry again shrugged his shoulder.  “Is it not much more probable that if he could be so very wicked he would be willing to deny his eldest son in order to save paying the debts?”

Harry could only declare that the facts were as he told them, or at least that all London believed them to be so, that at any rate Captain Mountjoy had gambled so recklessly as to put himself for ever and ever out of reach of a shilling of the property, and that it was clearly the duty of Mrs. Mountjoy, as Florence’s mother, not to accept him as a suitor.

It was only by slow degrees that the conversation had arrived at this pass.  Harry had never as yet declared his own love either to the mother or daughter, and now appeared simply as a narrator of this terrible story.  But at this point it did appear to him that he must introduce himself in another guise.

“The fact is, Mrs. Mountjoy,” he said, starting to his feet, “that I am in love with your daughter myself.”

“And therefore you have come here to vilify Captain Scarborough.”

“I have come,” said he, “at any rate to tell the truth.  If it be as I say, you cannot think it right that he should marry your daughter.  I say nothing of myself, but that, at any rate, cannot be.”

“It is no business of yours, Mr. Annesley.”

“Except that I would fain think that her business should be mine.”

But he could not prevail with Mrs. Mountjoy either on this day or the next to allow him to see Florence, and at last was obliged to leave Cheltenham without having done so.

CHAPTER IV.

Captain Scarborough’s disappearance.

A few days after the visits to Cheltenham, described in the last chapters, Harry Annesley, coming down a passage by the side of the Junior United Service Club into Charles Street, suddenly met Captain Scarborough at two o’clock in the morning.  Where Harry had been at that hour need not now be explained, but it may be presumed that he had not been drinking tea with any of his female relatives.