Mr. Scarborough had a niece, one Florence Mountjoy, to whom it had been intended that Captain Scarborough should be married.  There had been no considerations of money when the intention had been first formed, for the lady was possessed of no more than ten thousand pounds, which would have been as nothing to the prospects of the captain when the idea was first entertained.  But Mr. Scarborough was fond of people who belonged to him.  In this way he had been much attached to his late brother-in-law, General Mountjoy, and had perceived that his niece was beautiful and graceful, and was in every way desirable, as one who might be made in part thus to belong to himself.  Florence herself, when the idea of the marriage was first suggested to her by her mother, was only eighteen, and received it with awe rather than with pleasure or abhorrence.  To her her cousin Mountjoy had always been a most magnificent personage.  He was only seven years her senior, but he had early in life assumed the manners, as he had also done the vices, of mature age, and loomed large in the girl’s eyes as a man of undoubted wealth and fashion.  At that period, three years antecedent to his father’s declaration, he had no doubt been much in debt, but his debts had not been generally known, and his father had still thought that a marriage with his cousin might serve to settle him—­to use the phrase which was common with himself.  From that day to this the courtship had gone on, and the squire had taught himself to believe that the two cousins were all but engaged to each other.  He had so considered it, at any rate, for two years, till during the last final year he had resolved to throw the captain overboard.  And even during this year there had been periods of hope, for he had not finally made up his mind till but a short time before he had put it in practice.  No doubt he was fond of his niece in accordance with his own capability for fondness.  He would caress her and stroke her hair, and took delight in having her near to him.  And of true love for such a girl his heart was quite capable.  He was a good-natured, fearless, but not a selfish man, to whom the fate in life of this poor girl was a matter of real concern.

And his eldest son, who was by no means good-natured, had something of the same nature.  He did love truly,—­after his own fashion of loving.  He would have married his cousin at any moment, with or without her ten thousand pounds,—­for of all human beings he was the most reckless.  And yet in his breast was present a feeling of honor of which his father knew nothing.  When it was explained to him that his mother’s fair name was to be aspersed,—­a mother whom he could but faintly remember,—­the threat did bring with it its own peculiar agony.  But of this the squire neither felt or knew anything.  The lady had long been dead, and could be none the better or the worse for aught that could be said of her.  To the captain it was not so, and it was preferable to him to believe his father to be dishonest than his mother.  He, at any rate, was in truth in love with his cousin Florence, and when the story was told to him one of its first effects was the bearing which it would have upon her mind.