You do not suppose that I am going to say that you are engaged to marry that odious young man?
All the world knows how atrociously badly he has behaved to your own cousin.

He left him lying for dead in the street by a blow from his own hand; and though from that day to this nothing has been heard of Mountjoy, nothing is known to the police of what may have been his fate;--even stranger, he may have perished under the usage which he received, yet Mr.Annesley has not thought it right to say a word of what had occurred.

He has not dared even to tell an inspector of police the events of that night.

And the young man was your own cousin, to whom you were known to have been promised for the last two years." "No, no!" said Florence.
"I say that it was so.

You were promised to your cousin, Mountjoy Scarborough." "Not with my own consent." "All your friends,--your natural friends,--knew that it was to be so.