When Miss Crampton’s letter reached the hands of Mr Frederick Walcheren, it was by the four o’clock post, and that gentleman was lying on a couch in his apartments in Nevern Mansions. He was a handsome man of about thirty, with dark eyes and hair, and classical features, set in a pale, clear complexion. He was clean shorn, except for a small, soft moustache, and the possessor of a tall, lithe figure. He had an ample fortune, having inherited about two thousand a year from an old Catholic godfather, who died when Frederick was quite an infant, and who had expressed a wish in his will that his godson and heir should enter the church, or, at all events, benefit the church by founding some religious institution at his own death, with the fortune he left in his charge. But the old gentleman could hardly have chosen a worse guardian of his property. No embargo had been laid on the young man spending his money as he chose, and his choice was to spend it on himself and the companions whom he delighted to honour. His little flat in Earl’s Court was only a _pied à terre_. His home may have been said to exist at Epsom, Goodwood, Newmarket, or any one of the other race-courses in England. He was also to be met periodically at Monte Carlo or Paris. Occasionally he would take a fancy to run over to New York or San Francisco, but, wherever he pitched his tent, one might be sure there were plenty of opportunities for gambling and speculation. Not but what Frederick Walcheren was a perfectly honourable man; but he could not live (or he thought he could not live) without excitement of some sort, and he loved the uncertainty and risk of betting and play. His money and his good looks had rendered him an easy prey to the harpies of the other sex, and had landed him into one or two scrapes with more respectable women. His cousin, Philip, had often had to be the go-between and peacemaker with sundry fair damsels, who were violently bent on a breach of promise case, or a horse-whipping through means of their next friend. Mr Philip Walcheren was quite a different sort of character from his cousin. Married, and the father of a family, a staunch Catholic, steady and prosperous in his business as a solicitor, he was almost a pattern man, and Frederick’s goings-on were a marvel and a misery to him. He and his director, Father Tasker, were constantly talking over the other man, and wondering by what means they could dissuade him from his follies, and induce him to lead a more sober life. But, as yet, their exhortations and entreaties had been of no avail. Frederick laughed at their cautions, and pooh-poohed their predictions of a repentant future. He meant to live his life, he told them, and asked for no one’s pity or advice. He was in reality, what Mr Crampton and Henry Hindes had called him, a dissolute and irreclaimable spendthrift, and not fit to be the husband of any girl.