but to wealth-yielding sugar plantations in the West Indies.  She was but twenty and had some good looks and an amiable temper, though with her fortune, had she been ugly as Hecate, she would have had more suitors than she could manage with ease.  But she was not easily pleased, or of a susceptible nature, and ’twas known she had refused suitor after suitor, among them men of quality and rank, the elegant and decorous Viscount Wilford, among others, having knelt at her feet, and—­having proffered her the boon of his lofty manner and high accomplishments —­having been obliged to rise a discarded man, to his amazement and discomfort.  The world she lived in was of the better and more respectable order, and Jack Oxon had seen little of it, finding it not gay and loose enough for his tastes, but suddenly, for reasons best known to himself and to his anxious mother, he began to appear at its decorous feasts.  ’Twas said of him he “had a way” with women and could make them believe anything until they found him out, either through lucky chance or because he had done with them.  He could act the part of tender, honest worshipper, of engaging penitent, of impassioned and romantic lover until a woman old and wise enough to be his mother might be entrapped by him, aided as he was by his beauty, his large blue eyes, his merry wit, and the sweetest voice in the world.  So it seemed that Mistress Beaton, who was young and had lived among better men, took him for one and found her fancy touched by him.  His finest allurements he used, verses he writ, songs he made and sang, poetic homilies on disinterested passion he preached, while the world looked on and his boon companions laid wagers.  At last those who had wagered on him won their money, those who had laid against him lost, for ’twas made known publicly that he had won the young lady’s heart, and her hand and fortune were to be given to him.

This had happened but a week or two before he had appeared at the ball which celebrated young Colin’s coming of age, and also by chance the announcement of the fine match to be made of Mistress Clorinda Wildairs.  ’Twas but like him, those who knew him said, that though he himself was on the point of making a marriage, he should burn with fury and jealous rage, because the beauty he had dangled about had found a husband and a fortune.  Some said he had loved Mistress Clorinda with such passion that he would have wed her penniless if she would have taken him, others were sure he would have married no woman without fortune, whatsoever his love for her, and that he had but laid dishonest siege to Mistress Clo and been played with and flouted by her.  But howsoever this might have been, he watched her that night, black with rage, and went back to town in an evil temper.  Perhaps ’twas this temper undid him, and being in such mood he showed the cloven foot, for two weeks later all knew the match was broken off, Mistress Beaton went back to her estates in Scotland, his creditors descended upon him in hordes, such of his properties as could be seized were sold, and in a month his poor, distraught mother died of a fever brought on by her disappointment and shame.