Her name was Clara Huddlestone: it sounded very beautiful
in my ears; but not so beautiful as that other name of Clara
Cassilis, which she wore during the longer and, I thank God, the
happier portion of her life. Her father, Bernard Huddlestone, had
been a private banker in a very large way of business. Many years
before, his affairs becoming disordered, he had been led to try
dangerous, and at last criminal, expedients to retrieve himself
from ruin. All was in vain; he became more and more cruelly
involved, and found his honour lost at the same moment with his
fortune. About this period, Northmour had been courting his
daughter with great assiduity, though with small encouragement; and
to him, knowing him thus disposed in his favour, Bernard
Huddlestone turned for help in his extremity. It was not merely
ruin and dishonour, nor merely a legal condemnation, that the
unhappy man had brought upon his head. It seems he could have gone
to prison with a light heart. What he feared, what kept him awake
at night or recalled him from slumber into frenzy, was some secret,
sudden, and unlawful attempt upon his life. Hence, he desired to
bury his existence and escape to one of the islands in the South
Pacific, and it was in Northmour's yacht, the RED EARL, that he
designed to go. The yacht picked them up clandestinely upon the
coast of Wales, and had once more deposited them at Graden, till
she could be refitted and provisioned for the longer voyage.
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