He won Julia’s heart straight off, and Captain Bulsted’s profound admiration.  ’Now I know the man I’ve always been adoring since you were so high, Harry,’ said she.  Captain Bulsted sighed:  ’Your husband bows to your high good taste, my dear.’  They relished him sincerely, and between them and him I suffered myself to be dandled once more into a state of credulity, until I saw my aunt Dorothy in the afternoon subsequent to the appointed meeting.  His deep respect and esteem for her had stayed him from answering any of her questions falsely.  To that extent he had been veracious.  It appeared, that driven hard by the squire, who would have no waving of flags and lighting of fireworks in a matter of business, and whose ‘commoner’s mind’ chafed sturdily at a hint of the necessity for lavish outlays where there was a princess to win, he had rallied on the fiction that many of the cheques, standing for the bulk of the sums expended, were moneys borrowed by him of me, which he designed to repay, and was prepared to repay instantly—­could in fact, the squire demanding it, repay, as it were, on the spot; for behold, these borrowed moneys were not spent; they were moneys invested in undertakings, put out to high rates of interest; moneys that perhaps it would not be adviseable to call in without a season of delay; still, if Mr. Beltham, acting for his grandson and heir, insisted, it should be done.  The moneys had been borrowed purely to invest them with profit on my behalf:  a gentleman’s word of honour was pledged to it.

The squire grimly gave him a couple of months to make it good.

Dorothy Beltham and my father were together for about an hour at Eckerthy’s farm.  She let my father kiss her hand when he was bending to take his farewell of her, but held her face away.  He was in manifest distress, hardly master of his voice, begged me to come to him soon, and bowing, with ‘God bless you, madam, my friend on earth!’ turned his heel, bearing his elastic frame lamentably.  A sad or a culprit air did not befit him:  one reckoned up his foibles and errors when seeing him under a partly beaten aspect.  At least, I did; not my dear aunt, who was compassionate of him, however thoroughly she condemned his ruinous extravagance, and the shifts and evasions it put him to.  She feared, that instead of mending the difficulty, he had postponed merely to exaggerate it in the squire’s mind; and she was now of opinion that the bringing him down to meet the squire was very bad policy, likely to result in danger to my happiness; for, if the money should not be forthcoming on the date named, all my father’s faults would be transferred to me as his accomplice, both in the original wastefulness and the subterfuges invented to conceal it.  I recollected that a sum of money had really been sunk in Prince Ernest’s coal-mine.  My aunt said she hoped for the best.