"What is his history?" Rachel asked the question with a vague sense of resentment against her prosperous host, who had probably never known misfortunes. "Well, he was an only son, and I suppose spoilt--to begin with. He was brought up for the army--simply, as far as I can make out, from force of habit, because his father and no end of grandfathers had been soldiers before him--instead of being taught how to manage and improve that ramshackle old property of his. "He was in a crack cavalry regiment; one of the worst of them--I mean for folly and extravagance; and he went no end of a pace, as if he had the Bank of England at his back, and got all his affairs into a mess; and then he got gambling at Newmarket. The story goes that he played a brother-officer for some woman that they were both in love with; and he staked everything he had in the world that he could lay his hands on, except that old land and house, which the law kept for his children. Fortunately, he is not married, nor ever likely to be." "And he lost her?" said Rachel, in an awed whisper, with something very like tears in her eyes. "Her? He lost more than ever she was worth, I'll be bound. He lost to that extent that he had to sell his commission to pay. The young fool! he must have been a raving lunatic." "And what did he do then?" asked Rachel, taking out her handkerchief and blowing her nose ostentatiously. "No one quite knows what he did for the first few years after he sold out. He lived in Paris most of his time, and knocked about on the continent, at Baden and those places--up to no good, you may be sure. Then he went to the Cape, hunting and amusing himself; and then to California, gold-digging; and then all about South America, trying farming or cattle-raising, or something of that sort; and then Digby went home and married his sister, and she persuaded him to come here." "Has he been here long?" "A year or two. He has lived with them most of the time--learning colonial experience of Digby, I suppose. She is awfully fond of him, that little woman. And Digby never says a word against him--for her sake, I suppose." "Why should he say anything against him?" asked Rachel rather warmly. "He is doing nothing wrong now, is he?" "Oh, no. He is older and wiser now, I daresay. Still--still--" and Mr. Thornley looked askance at the pretty young creature who was about to make this reprobate's acquaintance under his roof, and bethought him that he ought to secure her against temptation and danger--"still there's no doubt that he is rather a bad lot--what you would call a black sheep, you know, my dear--not the sort of man that it is desirable to be very intimate with." Rachel blushed one of her ready blushes, and with such suddenness and vigour that Mr. Thornley feared he had accidentally made equivocal suggestions.