governess; and he took on board a Mr. and Mrs. Houghton to do
propriety, shady sort of people I imagine, but that she did not
know.'

'I have heard of them,' said Lady Kirkaldy, significantly.

'She must have been a kind friend to the poor girl,' said Mark. 'On
some report that Lady de Lyonnais was coming down on her, wrathful
and terrible, the poor foolish girl let herself be persuaded to be
carried off in the yacht, but there Mrs. Houghton watched over her
like a dragon. She made them put in at some little place in Jersey,
put in the banns, all unknown to my uncle, and got them married.
Each was trying to outwit the other, while Miss Headworth herself was
quite innocent and unconscious, and, I don't know whether to call it
an excuse for Uncle Alwyn or not, but to this hour he is not sure
whether it was a legal marriage, and my father believes it was not,
looking on it as a youthful indiscretion. He put her in lodgings at
Dieppe, under Mrs. Houghton's protection, while he returned home on a
peremptory summons from the General. He found the old man in such a
state of body and mind as he tries to persuade me was an excuse for
denying the whole thing, and from that time he represents himself as
bound hand and foot by the General's tyranny. He meant to have kept
the secret, given her an allowance, and run over from time to time to
see her, but he only could get there once before the voyage to the
West Indies. The whole affair was, as he said, complicated by his
debts, those debts that the estate has never paid off. The General
probably distrusted him, for he curtailed his allowance, and scarcely
let him out of sight; and he--he submitted for the sake of his
prospects, and thinking the old man much nearer his end than he
proved to be. I declare as I listened, it came near to hearing him