d have been to him. I always knew he was little better than a
fool, but I could hardly have hoped that he would have walked into the
trap as he has done. I suppose that other blow old Bayley spoke of was
that affair of his daughter. That was a lucky business for me too."

Fred Barkley was not mistaken, it was of his daughter Captain Bayley had
been thinking when he spoke. He had married young when he first went out
to India, and had lost his wife two years later, leaving him with a
daughter six months old. He had sent her home to England, and after a
twenty years' absence he had returned and found her grown up.

She had inherited something of her father's passionate disposition, and
possessed, in addition, an amount of sullen obstinacy which was wholly
alien to his nature. But her father saw none of these defects in her
character. She was very beautiful, with an air of pride and hauteur
which he liked. She had a right to be proud, he thought, for she was a
very wealthy heiress, for, his two elder brothers having died childless
while he was in India, the fine property of their father had all
descended to him.

Though the girl had many suitors, she would listen to none of them,
having formed a strong attachment to a man in station altogether beneath
her. He had given lessons in drawing at the school which had been her
home as well as her place of education during her father's absence, for
Captain Bayley had quarrelled with his sisters, both of whom, he
considered, had married beneath them.

The fact that Ella Bayley was an only child, and that her father was a
wealthy man, was known in the school, and had, in some way, come to the
ears of the drawing-master, who was young, and by no means ill-looking.
He had played his cards well. Ella was romantic and impetuous, and,
before long, returned the devotion which her teacher expressed for her.

When her father returned home, and Ella left school to take her place at
the head of his establishment, she had hoped that she should be able to
win from him a consent to her engagement; but she found his prejudices
on the subject of birth were strong, and she waited two years before she
broached the subject.

The wrath of Captain Bayley was prodigious; he heaped abusive epithets
upon the man of her choice, till Ella's temper rose also. There was a
passionate quarrel between father and daughter. The next morning Ella
was missing; a week afterwards Captain Bayley received a copy of