"Do you mean that Captain Scarborough would pay all his debts?"
"He will have to pay that one, because it was not included in the schedule. What do you think has turned up now?"
"Some other scheme?"
"It is all scheming,—base, false scheming,—to have been concerned with which will be a disgrace to my name forever!"
"Oh, papa!"
"Yes; forever! He has told me, now, that Mountjoy is his true, legitimate, eldest son. He declares that that story which I have believed for the last eight months has been altogether false, and made out of his own brain to suit his own purposes. In order to enable him to defraud these money-lenders he used a plot which he had concocted long since, and boldly declared Augustus to be his heir. He made me believe it; and because I believed it, even those greedy, grasping men, who would not have given up a tithe of their prey to save the whole family, even they believed it too. Now, at the very point of death, he comes forward with perfect coolness, and tells me that the whole story was a plot made out of his own head."
"Do you believe him now?"
"I became very wroth, and said that it was a lie! I did think that it was a lie. I did flatter myself that in a matter concerning my own business, and in which I was bound to look after the welfare of others, he could not have so deceived me; but I find myself as a child—as a baby—in his hands."
"Then you do believe him now?"
"I am afraid so. I will never see him again, if it be possible for me to avoid him. He has treated me as no one should have treated his enemy, let alone a faithful friend. He must have scoffed and scorned at me merely because I had faith in his word. Who could have thought of a man laying his plots so deeply,—arranging for twenty years past the frauds which he has now executed? For thirty years, or nearly, his mind has been busy on these schemes, and on others, no doubt, which he has not thought it necessary to execute, and has used me in them simply as a machine. It is impossible that I should forgive him."