Young Ainsworth went to the bad before he was twenty-five, and was kicked out of his situation. The shock killed his father, who was an old man. There was no will, and young Ainsworth got his father's money and went betting on the turf, and when there were no races he devoted his energies to cards. It was on his way back from a great Sussex race-meeting that he came upon the quiet little town of Beechley, and first met Kate Ray. He was then past thirty years of age, and had been moderately successful on the turf and on the board of green cloth. In Beechley he concealed the nature of his occupation, stayed there a month or two, and won the giddy heart of the beautiful Kate Ray. But her brother would not listen to him, and Kate, who would have a little money when she came of age, was a minor and in the hands of guardians, who would have nothing to do with him either. So Ainsworth, being by no means insensible to the money Kate would come into at twenty-one, drew off for a while, promising Kate to come back later.
Two whole years passed before John Ainsworth again appeared at Beechley. By this time the flighty and beautiful girl had married Frank Mellor, who had just inherited a considerable fortune upon the death of an old miserly bachelor grand-uncle, that had lived all his life in London, and made money in the Baltic trade.
Then, out of a spirit of pure revenge, Ainsworth secretly pursued Kate, and worked upon her fickle and weak nature until she fled with him, taking her baby boy, Frank Mellor's child.
After three years that child had been restored to his father, while the mother lay dying at good Mrs. Pemberton's, a rifle-shot from Boland's Ait and the office of John Ainsworth, who had assumed the name of Crawford.
CHAPTER X.
[FATHER AND SON.]
Of all the men in London, there was scarcely one less qualified to take charge of a young child than Francis Bramwell, living alone on his tiny island in the South London Canal. He was not used to children. He had had only one sister, and no brother. His sister, twelve years older than himself, had married and gone away to Australia before he was eight years of age. His father had been a successful attorney in Shoreham, where he died ten years ago, when his son was just twenty years old. His mother had been dead many years at that time.
When his grand-uncle was buried a few years later, Bramwell became rich and left Shoreham. He had been reading for the Bar in a half-hearted and dilatory way.
He gave up all thought of the profession, and resolved to lead a life of lettered ease and contemplation, to be summed up later, probably in a book of one kind or another. In fact, as soon as he found himself independent he determined to devote his attention to poetry, and, as he did not feel certain of possessing a strong vein of genius, he determined to confine himself to translations by way of a beginning.
For quietness he moved out of Shoreham to a cottage a few miles from the dull little town of Beechley, and in Beechley, after the first visit of John Ainsworth, he made the acquaintance of Philip Ray and his beautiful sister Kate.