He did love truly,--after his own fashion of loving.

He would have married his cousin at any moment, with or without her ten thousand pounds,--for of all human beings he was the most reckless.

And yet in his breast was present a feeling of honor of which his father knew nothing.

When it was explained to him that his mother's fair name was to be aspersed,--a mother whom he could but faintly remember,--the threat did bring with it its own peculiar agony.

But of this the squire neither felt or knew anything.