Then there came nearly twelve months of most painful uncertainty in her life.  It is very hard for a young girl to have to be firm with her mother in declining a proposed marriage, when all circumstances of the connection are recommended to her as being peculiarly alluring.  And there was nothing in the personal manners of her cousin which seemed to justify her in declaring her abhorrence.  He was a dark, handsome, military-looking man, whose chief sin it was in the eyes of his cousin that he seemed to demand from her affection, worship, and obedience.  She did not analyse his character, but she felt it.  And when it came to pass that tidings of his debts at last reached her, she felt that she was glad of an excuse, though she knew that the excuse would not have prevailed with her had she liked him.  Then came his debts, and with the knowledge of them a keener perception of his imperiousness.  She could consent to become the wife of the man who had squandered his property and wasted his estate; but not of one who before his marriage demanded of her that submission which, as she thought, should be given by her freely after her marriage.  Harry Annesley glided into her heart after a manner very different from this.  She knew that he adored her, but yet he did not hasten to tell her so.  She knew that she loved him, but she doubted whether a time would ever come in which she could confess it.  It was not till he had come to acknowledge the trouble to which Mountjoy had subjected him that he had ever ventured to speak plainly of his own passion, and even then he had not asked for a reply.  She was still free, as she thought of all this, but she did at last tell herself that, let her mother say what she would, she certainly never would stand at the altar with her cousin Mountjoy.

Even now, when the captain had been declared not to be his father’s heir, and when all the world knew that he had disappeared from the face of the earth, Mrs. Mountjoy did not altogether give him up.  She partly disbelieved her brother, and partly thought that circumstances could not be so bad as they were described.

To her feminine mind,—­to her, living, not in the world of London, but in the very moderate fashion of Cheltenham,—­it seemed to be impossible that an entail should be thus blighted in the bud.  Why was an entail called an entail unless it were ineradicable,—­a decision of fate rather than of man and of law?  And to her eyes Mountjoy Scarborough was so commanding that all things must at last be compelled to go as he would have them.  And, to tell the truth, there had lately come to Mrs. Mountjoy a word of comfort, which might be necessary if the world should be absolutely upset in accordance with the wicked skill of her brother, which even in that case might make crooked things smooth.  Augustus, whom she had regarded always as quite a Mountjoy, because of his talent, and appearance, and habit of command, had whispered to her a word.  Why should