This Mr. Etherton could not do. Lord and Lady Coldburgh, in the end, were compelled to retire to a mansion his lordship possessed in Yorkshire and live (starve they styled it), on four hundred a year, the creditors having allowed them that sum from the property till the whole of the debts were paid off, which would not be for a term of fourteen years. Sir Godfrey Etherton had to pay a sum of nine thousand pounds, it being proved that part of the fourteen thousand pounds included gambling debts of his son. The baronet felt this severely, being both a penurious and heartless man, for he was quite satisfied in his mind that Mabel was his niece; but he was in great hopes that having lost the contents of the casket, and her mother being, as he believed, guillotined, he should never hear more of her claims. The baronet insisted on his son giving up his racing associates and extravagant mode of life, fixing upon some wealthy heiress, and winding up his future by marriage. But Mr. Philip Etherton’s career was destined to be a very short one; the year after, whilst shooting with a friend, in loading his double-barrelled gun, the loaded barrel, by some unaccountable accident, went off, and the contents lodged in the brain of the unfortunate young man, killing him on the spot. This terrible catastrophe plunged the Etherton family into deep despondency. Sir Godfrey appeared to feel it as a judgment upon him for his cruelty and injustice to his orphan niece, and yet he strove in his own mind to convince himself that he acted from principle; “for why,” he argued, “should I receive a young girl as my niece simply upon a woman’s word, who may be, and no doubt is, an impostor?” The baronet, immediately after the death of his eldest son, removed Howard Etherton from the navy, and he returned home. Sir Godfrey’s troubles and anxiety of mind respecting his brother’s wife and child brought on a heart disease, and in less than five years from Mabel’s residence in England he was gathered to his fathers, and Howard Etherton succeeded to the title and estates.