'Do you mean that he is alive?' exclaimed Miss Headworth in dismay.
'Oh! he is a wickeder man than even I supposed, to have forsaken her
all these years. Is my poor child in his power? Must her peace, now
she has attained it, be disturbed?'

'There is a great deal to take into consideration,' said Lady
Kirkaldy. 'I had better tell you how this visit of mine came about,
and explain some matters about the Egremont family.'

She then told how Captain Egremont, after a brief service in the Life
Guards, had been made to retire, that the old General, whose heir he
was, might keep him in attendance on him. Already self-indulgent and
extravagant, the idleness of the life he led with the worn-out old
roue had deadened his better feelings, and habituated him to
dissipation, while his debts, his expensive habits, and his dread of
losing the inheritance, had bound him over to the General. Both had
been saved from the fire in the Ninon, whence they were picked up by
a Chilian vessel, and they had been long in communicating with home.
The General hated England, and was in broken health. He had spent
the remaining years of his life at various continental resorts, where
he could enjoy a warm climate, combined with facilities for high
play.

When at length, he died, Captain Egremont had continued the life to
which he had become accustomed, and had of late manifested an
expectation that his nephew Mark should play the same part by him as
he had done by the General, but the youth, bred in a very different
tone, would on no account thus surrender himself to an evil bondage.
Indeed he felt all the severity of youthful virtue, and had little