generosity. Shrinking, naturally, from allowing her husband to be
annoyed, and probably cheated as well, by any person who claimed,
however preposterously, a family connection with herself, it had been
her practice, for many years past, to assist the captain from her own
purse, on the condition that he should never come near the house, and
that he should not presume to make any application whatever to Mr.
Vanstone.

Readily admitting the imprudence of this course, Mrs. Vanstone further
explained that she had perhaps been the more inclined to adopt it
through having been always accustomed, in her early days, to see
the captain living now upon one member, and now upon another, of her
mother's family. Possessed of abilities which might have raised him
to distinction in almost any career that he could have chosen, he
had nevertheless, from his youth upward, been a disgrace to all his
relatives. He had been expelled the militia regiment in which he once
held a commission. He had tried one employment after another, and had
discreditably failed in all. He had lived on his wits, in the lowest and
basest meaning of the phrase. He had married a poor ignorant woman, who
had served as a waitress at some low eating-house, who had unexpectedly
come into a little money, and whose small inheritance he had mercilessly
squandered to the last farthing. In plain terms, he was an incorrigible
scoundrel; and he had now added one more to the list of his many
misdemeanors by impudently breaking the conditions on which Mrs.
Vanstone had hitherto assisted him. She had written at once to the
address indicated on his card, in such terms and to such purpose as
would prevent him, she hoped and believed, from ever venturing near the
house again. Such were the terms in which Mrs. Vanstone concluded that
first part of her letter which referred exclusively to Captain Wragge.