nnesley had been introduced to the captain by his brother, and an intimacy had grown up between them. He had brought him to Tretton Park when Florence was there, and Harry had since made his own way

what all these tokens had meant. Her cousin, Captain Scarborough, was to her magnificent, powerful, but terrible withal. She had asked herself a thousand times whether it would be possible for her to love him and to become his wife. She had never quite given even to herself an answer to this question till she had suddenly found herself enabled to do so by his over-confidence in asking her to confess that she loved him. She had never acknowledged anything, even to herself, as to Harry

s period. There will be found to be nothing very heroic about him. He is a young man with more than a fair allowance of a young man's folly;-it may also be said of a young man's weak

rate country gentleman; but though Buston be not very far removed from the centre of everything, being in Hertfordshire and not more than forty miles from London, Mr. Prosper lived so retired a life, and was so far removed from the ways of men, that he apparently did not know but that his heir was as completely entitled to lead an idle life as though he were the son of a duke or a brewer. It must not, however, be imagined that Mr. Prosper was especially attached to his nephew. When the boy left th

ly a religious man, or that the rector was the reverse: but the parson was joyous, whereas the other was solemn. The squire,-who never went to church, because he was supposed to be ill,-made up for the deficiency by his devotional tendencies when the children were at the Hall. He read through a sermon after dinner, unintelligibly and even inaudibly. At this his brother-in-law, who had an evening service in his own church, of course never was present; but Mrs. Annesley and the girls were there, and the younger children. But Harry Annesley had absolutely declined; and his uncle having found out that he never attended the church service, although he always left the

to refuse her allegiance to this sovereign by the interference of her other very indifferent suitor. What would be Buston and two thousand a year, as compared with all the glories and limitless income of the great Tretton property? Captain Scarborough, with his mustaches and magnificence, was just the man who would be sure to become a peer. She had always heard the income fixed at thirty thousand a year. What would a few debts signify to thirty thousand a year? Such had been her thoughts up to the period of Captain Scarborough's late visit, when he had come to Cheltenham, and had renewed his demand for Flor

t he was not and never had been the heir to Tretton Park. All that still increasing property about Tretton, on which so many hopes had been founded, would belong to his brother. Harry, as he heard the tale, immediately connected it with Florence. He had, of course, known the captain was a suitor to the girl's hand, and there had been a time when he thought that his own hopes were consequentl

ed at once at the house and saw the mother, but Florence was discreet

n the eye of the law." Then he had to undertake that task, very difficul

on that he failed for a long time to make her comprehend it. "Do yo

at fi

at he k

it. He confesses

nt to rob Augustus all through?" Harry again shrugged his shoulder. "Is it not much more probable that if

at any rate Captain Mountjoy had gambled so recklessly as to put himself for ever and ever out of reach of a shilling o

clared his own love either to the mother or daughter, and now appeared simply as a narrator of this t

id, starting to his feet, "that I a

ve come here to vilif

as I say, you cannot think it right that he should marry your dau

ness of yours,

ain think that her bus

s day or the next to allow him to see Florence, and at la