To her her cousin Mountjoy had always been a most magnificent personage.

He was only seven years her senior, but he had early in life assumed the manners, as he had also done the vices, of mature age, and loomed large in the girl's eyes as a man of undoubted wealth and fashion.

At that period, three years antecedent to his father's declaration, he had no doubt been much in debt, but his debts had not been generally known, and his father had still thought that a marriage with his cousin might serve to settle him--to use the phrase which was common with himself.

From that day to this the courtship had gone on, and the squire had taught himself to believe that the two cousins were all but engaged to each other.

He had so considered it, at any rate, for two years, till during the last final year he had resolved to throw the captain overboard.