his life led him irremediably astray, that he would have lived virtuous and respected, and died in good odour, leaving behind him a happy memory.  But fate had placed him in antagonism with the world, and yet had endowed him with a gnawing desire to be of the world, as it appeared most desirable to him; and then, to complete his ruin circumstances had thrown him into temptations from which inexperience and the headlong strength of his passions gave him no opportunity to escape.

It may at first appear strange that a man so calculating and whose desires seemed to be fixed upon such a material end as the acquirement by artifice or even fraud of the wealth which he coveted, should also nourish in his heart so bitter a hatred and so keen a thirst for revenge upon a woman as Mr. Quest undoubtedly did towards his beautiful wife.  It would have seemed more probable that he would have left heroics alone and attempted to turn his wife’s folly into a means of wealth and self-advancement:  and this would not doubt have been so had Mrs. Quest’s estimate of his motives in marrying her been an entirely correct one.  She had told Edward Cossey, it will be remembered, that her husband had married her for her money—­the ten thousand pounds of which he stood so badly in need.  Now this was the truth to a certain extent, and a certain extent only.  He had wanted the ten thousand pounds, in fact at the moment money was necessary to him.  But, and this his wife had never known or realised, he had been, and still was, also in love with her.  Possibly the ten thousand pounds would have proved a sufficient inducement to him without the love, but the love was none the less there.  Their relations, however, had never been happy ones.  She had detested him from the fist, and had not spared to say so.  No man with any refinement—­and whatever he lacked Mr. Quest had refinement—­could bear to be thus continually repulsed by a woman, and so it came to pass that their intercourse had always been of the most strained nature.  Then when she at last had obtained the clue to the secret of his life, under threat of exposure she drove her bargain, of which the terms were complete separation in all but outward form, and virtual freedom of action for herself.  This, considering the position, she was perhaps justified in doing, but her husband never forgave her for it.  More than that, he determined, if by any means it were possible, to turn the passion which, although she did not know it, he was perfectly aware she bore towards his business superior, Edward Cossey, to a refined instrument of vengeance against her, with what success it will be one of the purposes of this history to show.

Such, put as briefly as possible, were the outlines of the character and aims of this remarkable and contradictory man.

Within an hour and a half of leaving his own house, “The Oaks,” as it was called, although the trees from which it had been so named had long since vanished from the garden, Mr. Quest was bowling swiftly along behind Edward Cossey’s powerful bay horse towards the towering gateway of Honham Castle.  When he was within three hundred yards an idea struck him; he pulled the horse up sharply, for he was alone in the dogcart, and paused to admire the view.