At any rate, Dick Cortelyon did not escape shipwreck in so far as the utter ruin of his worldly prospects was concerned. He had not been a year in town before he committed the unpardonable folly--unpardonable in the only son of Squire Cortelyon--of marrying a fascinating little actress of no particular ability, who at that time was playing "chambermaid" parts at one of the patent theatres for a remuneration of a guinea a week. The marriage was kept by Dick a profound secret both from his father and his friends. But it had to be told the former when, some months later, he summoned Dick home on purpose to inform him that it was his wish--really tantamount to a command on the part of such a man--that he should "make up" to Miss Onoria Flood, the only daughter of a neighbor, and do his best to secure her before any other suitor appeared on the scene. When the fatal news was broken to the Squire he bundled Master Dick out of doors without a moment's hesitation. There and then he took an oath that he would never forgive him, nor ever set eyes on him again, and he was a man who prided himself on keeping his word. At once he stopped Dick's allowance. Some few years before these things came to pass, the Squire's grand-niece--granddaughter of his sister Agatha--an orphan left without means beyond a narrow pittance of eighty pounds a year, had come to live at Stanbrook, no other home being open to her. Although there was a difference of some six years in their ages, and although they had only met at intervals, they had been to each other like elder brother and younger sister. From the first Miss Baynard had conceived an almost passionate liking and admiration for her handsome, kind-hearted kinsman, and now that poor Dick was leaving home never to return, she contrived to have a stolen interview with him before he went. Although only just turned sixteen, she was in many things wise beyond her years, and before parting from Dick she obtained from him an address at which, he told her, a letter would at any time find him. Not being sure what his future movements might be, he gave her the address of his wife's uncle, who kept a tobacconist's shop in a street off Holborn. That done, Dick kissed her and went, and with his going half the sunshine seemed to vanish out of Nell's life. At once Dick Cortelyon broke with his old life and all its associations. The fashionable world knew him no more: he disappeared, he went under. He took a couple of furnished rooms in an obscure neighborhood, and for the next few months his wife's earnings and the proceeds of the sale of his watch and trinkets kept the pair of them. But there came a time when his wife could earn no more; and then a son was born to him. In this contingency he deemed himself a fortunate man in being able to get a lot of copying to do for a law firm in Chancery Lane.