Of Mr.Hart's "little game" he did not yet know the particulars; but he was confident that there was some game.
Augustus by no means gave his mother credit for the disgraceful conduct imputed to her in the story as now told by her surviving husband.

It was not that he believed in the honesty of his mother, whom he had never known, and for whose memory he cared little, but that he believed so fully in the dishonesty of his father.

His father, when he had thoroughly understood that Mountjoy had enveloped the property in debt, so that nothing but a skeleton would remain when the bonds were paid, had set to work, and by the ingenuity of his brain had resolved to redeem, as far as the Scarboroughs were concerned, their estate from its unfortunate position.
It was so that Augustus believed; this was the theory existing in his mind.

That his father should have been so clever, and Mr.Grey so blind, and even Mr.Hart and Mr.Tyrrwhit so easily hoodwinked, was remarkable.
But so it was,--or might probably be so.

He felt no assurance, but there was ever present to him the feeling of great danger.