Mr. Hugh Tregellas of Tregellas had four daughters and a mania for gambling. He did not fling his substance away on horse-racing, cock or man fights—indeed he lifted up his voice loudly against the immorality of these pursuits—he took shares in companies formed to extract gold from sea water, in expeditions to discover the kingdom of Prester John, and such like. Any rogue with an oiled tongue and a project sufficiently preposterous could win a hearing from the Squire. But though much money went out few ships came home, and the four Miss Tregellases sat in the parlor, their dowries dwindling to nothing, and waited for the suitors who did not come. All this was well known to their neighbor, Selina Donnithorne. She knew that when the four Miss Tregellases were not in the parlor playing at ladies they were down on their knee bones scrubbing floors. She even had it on sound authority that the two youngest forked out the cow-byre every morning. She called on the Squire one afternoon, going to Tregellas in state, dressed in her best, and driving in a cabriolet she had purchased dirt cheap from a broken-down roisterer at Bodmin Assizes. She saw Mr. Tregellas in his gunless gun-room and came to the point at once. She wanted his youngest daughter for John Penhale. Mr. Tregellas flushed with anger and opened his mouth to reply, but Selina gave him no opportunity. Her nephew was already a man of moderate means, she said, living on his own good farm in the Penwith Hundred, with an income of nearly one hundred pounds per annum into the bargain. When she died he would have Tregors also. He was well educated, a fine figure of a man and sound in wind and limb, if a trifle cut about one side of the face—one side only—but then, after all these wars, who was not? Here Mr. Tregellas managed to interpose a spluttering refusal. Selina nodded amiably. She ventured to remind Mr. Tregellas that since Arethusina’s dowry had sunk off Cape St. Vincent with the Fowey privateer, _God’s Providence_, her chances of a distinguished marriage were negligible—also that she, Selina, was now mortgagee of Tregellas and the mortgage fell due at Michaelmas. Mr. Tregellas was a gambler. As long as there was one chance left to him, no matter how long, the future was radiant. He laughed at Selina. He had large interests in a company for trading with the King of certain South Sea atolls, he said, the lagoons of which were paved with pearl. It had been estimated that this enterprise could not fail to enrich him at a rate of less than eleven hundred and fifty-three per centum. A ship bearing the first fruits was expected in Bristol almost any day now, was in fact overdue, but these nor’-easterly head winds . . . Mr. Tregellas saw Selina to the door, his good humor restored, promising her that long before Michaelmas he would not only be paying off the mortgage on Tregellas, but offering her a price for Tregors as well.