“The girl must know best,” returned Godfrey, evading, whilst at the same moment he confirmed the question.  “He always admired her from a boy.  We have had many disputes, nay downright quarrels, about her beauty.  She was never a great favorite of mine.  I admire gentle, not man-like women.”

“He is a scoundrel!” cried the Captain, throwing down his pipe with a sound that made his daughter start.  “He shall never darken my doors again, and so you may tell him, Mr. Godfrey, from me!”

“This is a severe sentence, but he deserves it!” said Godfrey.  “I fear my father will one day repent that he ever fostered this viper in his bosom.  Yet, strange to say, he always preferred him to me.  Report says that there is a stronger tie between them, but this is a base slander upon the generous nature of my father.  He loved Anthony’s mother better than he did mine; and he loves her son better than he does me.”

“Poor lad,” said the Captain, warmly grasping his hand, “You have been unkindly treated among them; and you shall always find a friend and a father in me.”

Godfrey was a little ashamed of his duplicity, and would gladly, if possible, have recalled that disgraceful scene; but having so far committed himself, he no longer regarded the consequences; but he determined to bear it out with the most hardened effrontery.

Whilst the victim of his diabolical art was writhing upon a sick bed under the most acute mental and bodily pain, the author of his suffering was enjoying the most flattering demonstrations of regard, which were lavishly bestowed upon him by the inhabitants of the Lodge.  But the vengeance of Heaven never sleeps, and though the stratagems of wicked men may for a time prove successful, the end generally proves the truth of the apostle’s awful denunciation:  “The wages of sin is death.”

CHAPTER XII.

    Art thou a father? did the generous tide
    Of warm parental love e’er fill thy veins,
    And bid thee feel an interest in thy kind? 
    Did the pulsation of that icy heart
    Quicken and vibrate to some gentle name,
    Breathed in secret at its sacred shrine?—­S.M.

Short was the time allowed to Anthony Hurdlestone to brood over his wrongs.  His uncle’s affairs had reached a crisis, and ruin stared him in the face.  Algernon Hurdlestone had ever been the most imprudent of men; and under the fallacious hope of redeeming his fortune, he had, unknown to his son and nephew, during his frequent trips to London, irretrievably involved himself by gambling to a large extent.  This false step completed what his reckless profusion had already begun.  He found himself always on the losing side, but the indulgence of this fatal propensity had become a passion, the excitement necessary to his existence.  The management of his estates had always been entrusted entirely to a steward, who, as his master’s fortunes declined, was rapidly rising in wealth and consequence.  Algernon never troubled himself to enquire into the real state of his finances, whilst Johnstone continued to furnish him with money to gratify all the whims and wants of the passing moment.