The young man who was unabashed by the indignation of a scion of Nugents and Cromies and Pagets must be utterly impervious to the sense of awe; and it was just such an impervious young man that the Captain wanted as his coadjutor.

Thus arose the alliance, which grew stronger every day, until Valentine took up his abode under the roof of his employer and patron, and made himself more thoroughly at home there than the unwelcome daughter of the house.
The history of Valentine Hawkehurst's past existence was tolerably well known to the Captain; but the only history of the young man's early life ever heard by Diana was rather vague and fragmentary.

She discovered, little by little, that he was the son of a spendthrift _litterateur_, who had passed the greater part of his career within the rules of the King's Bench; that he had run away from home at the age of fifteen, and had tried his fortune in all those professions which require no educational ordeal, and which seem to offer themselves invitingly to the scapegrace and adventurer.

At fifteen Valentine Hawkehurst had been errand-boy in a newspaper office; at seventeen a penny-a-liner, whose flimsy was pretty sure of admission in the lower class of Sunday papers.

In the course of a very brief career he had been a provincial actor, a _manege_ rider in a circus, a billiard-marker, and a betting agent.