Charles had been a clever fellow a very clever fellow in the eyes of his father.  Bernard Amedroz knew that he himself was not a clever fellow, and admired his son accordingly; and when Charles had been expelled from Harrow for some boyish freak in his vengeance against a neighbouring farmer, who had reported to the school authorities the doings of a few beagles upon his land, Charles had cut off the heads of all the trees in a young fir plantation his father was proud of the exploit.  When he was rusticated a second time from Trinity, and when the father received an intimation that his son’s name had better be taken from the College books, the squire was not so well pleased; but even then he found some delight in the stories which reached him of his son’s vagaries; and when the young man commenced Bohemian life in London, his father did nothing to restrain him.  Then there came the old story debts, endless debts; and lies, endless lies.  During the two years before his death, his father paid for him, or undertook to pay, nearly ten thousand pounds, sacrificing the life assurances which were to have made provision for his daughter; sacrificing, to a great extent, his own life income sacrificing everything, so that the property might not be utterly ruined at his death.  That Charles Amedroz should be a brighter, greater man than any other Amedroz, had still been the father’s pride.  At the last visit which Charles had paid to Belton his father had called upon him to pledge himself solemnly that his sister should not be made to suffer by what had been done for him.  Within a month of that time he had blown his brains out in his London lodgings, thus making over the entire property to Will Belton at his father’s death.  At that last pretended settlement with his father and his father’s lawyer, he had kept back the mention of debts as heavy nearly as those to which he had owned; and there were debts of honour, too, of which he had not spoken, trusting to the next event at Newmarket to set him right.  The next event at Newmarket had set him more wrong than ever, and so there had come an end to everything with Charles Amedroz.

This had happened in the spring, and the afflicted father afflicted with the double sorrow of his son’s terrible death and his daughter’s ruin had declared that he would turn his face to the wall and die.  But the old squire’s health, though far from strong, was stronger than he had deemed it, and his feelings, sharp enough, were less sharp than he thought them; and when a month had passed by, he had discovered that it would be better that he should live, in order that his daughter might still have bread to eat and a house of her own over her head.  Though he was now an impoverished man, there was still left to him the means of keeping up the old home; and he told himself that it must, if possible, be so kept that a few pounds annually might be put by for Clara.  The old carriage-horses were sold, and the park was let to a farmer, up to the hall door of the castle.  So much the squire could do; but as to the putting by of the few pounds, any dependence on such exertion as that on his part would, we may say, be very precarious.