Captain Bernard Dale was an officer in the corps of Engineers, was the first cousin of the two girls who have been speaking, and was nephew and heir presumptive to the squire.

His father, Colonel Dale, and his mother, Lady Fanny Dale, were still living at Torquay--an effete, invalid, listless couple, pretty well dead to all the world beyond the region of the Torquay card-tables.
He it was who had made for himself quite a career in the Nineteenth Dragoons.

This he did by eloping with the penniless daughter of that impoverished earl, the Lord De Guest.

After the conclusion of that event circumstances had not afforded him the opportunity of making himself conspicuous; and he had gone on declining gradually in the world's esteem--for the world had esteemed him when he first made good his running with the Lady Fanny--till now, in his slippered years, he and his Lady Fanny were unknown except among those Torquay Bath chairs and card-tables.

His elder brother was still a hearty man, walking in thick shoes, and constant in his saddle; but the colonel, with nothing beyond his wife's title to keep his body awake, had fallen asleep somewhat prematurely among his slippers.