As the earl was driven homeward he could not help feeling that he was engaged in a shameful enterprise. People would talk if he invited this gilded little snob to Shouldershott Castle, and would know very well why he was asked there. Let them talk.
"A million and a quarter!" said the poor peer. "And if I don't catch him, somebody else will."
Meanwhile, Captain Jack Clare, an extremely popular young officer of dragoons, was in the depths of despair. He was the younger brother of Lord Montacute, whose family was poor; he loved Lady Ella Santerre, whose family was still poorer. The heads of the families had forbidden the match for financial reasons. He had stolen an interview with Ella, and had found that she bowed to the decision of the seniors.
"It is all quite hopeless and impossible," she had said. "Good-bye, Jack!"
As he rode dispiritedly away, he could not see, for the intervening trees, that she was kneeling in the fern and crying.
II.--A Peer in Difficulties
The Lady Ella slipped an arm about her father's neck.
"You are in trouble, dear," she said. "Can I help you?"
"No," said the poor nobleman. "There's no help for it, Beggs says, and they'll have to cut down the timber in the park. Poverty, my dear, poverty."
This was a blow, and a heavy one.