The long and the short of it is, that
he wants five hundred pounds by hook or by crook, and that he thinks you
ought to let him have it."
"He'll get it, or the greater part of it. There's no doubt he'll get it
if he has got the captain's name. If I remember right, the captain did
sign a note for him to that amount,--and he'll get the money if he has
stuck to it."
"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.
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