"No doubt he knew it. He confesses as much himself."
"What a very wicked man he must be!" said Mrs. Mountjoy. Harry could only shrug his shoulder. "And he meant to rob Augustus all through?" Harry again shrugged his shoulder. "Is it not much more probable that if he could be so very wicked he would be willing to deny his eldest son in order to save paying the debts?"
Harry could only declare that the facts were as he told them, or at least that all London believed them to be so, that at any rate Captain Mountjoy had gambled so recklessly as to put himself for ever and ever out of reach of a shilling of the property, and that it was clearly the duty of Mrs. Mountjoy, as Florence's mother, not to accept him as a suitor.
It was only by slow degrees that the conversation had arrived at this pass. Harry had never as yet declared his own love either to the mother or daughter, and now appeared simply as a narrator of this terrible story. But at this point it did appear to him that he must introduce himself in another guise.
"The fact is, Mrs. Mountjoy," he said, starting to his feet, "that I am in love with your daughter myself."
"And therefore you have come here to vilify Captain Scarborough."
"I have come," said he, "at any rate to tell the truth. If it be as I say, you cannot think it right that he should marry your daughter. I say nothing of myself, but that, at any rate, cannot be."
"It is no business of yours, Mr. Annesley."
"Except that I would fain think that her business should be mine."
But he could not prevail with Mrs. Mountjoy either on this day or the next to allow him to see Florence, and at last was obliged to leave Cheltenham without having done so.