r foolish girl let herself be persuaded to be carried
off in the yacht, but there Mrs. Houghton watched over her like a
dragon. She made them put in at some little place in Jersey, put in
the banns, all unknown to my uncle, and got them married. Each was
trying to outwit the other, while Miss Headworth herself was quite
innocent and unconscious, and, I don't know whether to call it an
excuse for Uncle Alwyn or not, but to this hour he is not sure whether
it was a legal marriage, and my father believes it was not, looking on
it as a youthful indiscretion. He put her in lodgings at Dieppe, under
Mrs. Houghton's protection, while he returned home on a peremptory
summons from the General. He found the old man in such a state of body
and mind as he tries to persuade me was an excuse for denying the whole
thing, and from that time he represents himself as bound hand and foot
by the General's tyranny. He meant to have kept the secret, given her
an allowance, and run over from time to time to see her, but he only
could get there once before the voyage to the West Indies. The whole
affair was, as he said, complicated by his debts, those debts that the
estate has never paid off. The General probably distrusted him, for he
curtailed his allowance, and scarcely let him out of sight; and he--he
submitted for the sake of his prospects, and thinking the old man much
nearer his end than he proved to be. I declare as I listened, it came
near to hearing him say he had sold his soul to Satan! From the day he
sailed in the Ninon he has never written, never attempted any
communication with the woman whose life he had wrecked, except one
inquiry at Dieppe, and that was through Gregorio.'

'What! the valet?'

Yes. I believe I seemed surprised at such a medium being employed, for
Uncle Alwyn explained that the man had got hold of the secret
somehow--servants always know everything--and being a foreigner he was
likely to be able to trace her out.

'I daresay he profited by the knowledge to keep Alwyn in bondage during
the old man's lifetime.'

'I have no doubt of it, and he expected to play the same game with me.
The fellow reminds me, whenever I look at him, of a sort of incarnate
familiar demon. When I asked my uncle whether he could guess what had
become of her, he held up his hands with a hideous French grimace. I
could have taken him by the throat.'

'Nay, one must pity him. The morals of George IV.'s set had been
handed