to inquire how far he was agent or principal. What was certain was, that Fortune stood his friend; and he became notorious as much for good-luck as for ability. Having repeatedly steered his frail skiff in safety through the breakers, he launched a vessel on his own account, and mustered a crew. In other words, he finally came out as a full-fledged merchant, with agents at the Formosa Islands, and Singapore, and sundry of the Malay towns. For himself, he was here, there, and everywhere: the servants – whom he well knew how to choose, besides – could scarcely play him false, since his visits of supervision came off when they were least expected. So far he had the special gift of a M. de Lesseps, that he had the knack of establishing a friendly ascendancy over native potentates. He was understood to be hand in glove with not a few of the rajahs and sultans, and more than once his good offices and shrewd diplomacy had been of considerable service to the British authorities.
He was known to be rich; and it was said that he might have been richer, had it not been for his occasional flying trips to Scotland. And in the days when sailing-vessels and steamers made the circuit of the Cape, those visits were more serious affairs than they would be nowadays. But Moray, like Walter Scott, was wont to say that he must have died had he not occasionally breathed the air off the heather; while as it was, he had kept himself in admirable health, with an appetite that was as sound as his heart and his liver. During one of his furloughs, he had buried his father in Glenconan kirkyard, after having brightened the old man's declining years by relieving the estates of the last of their encumbrances. During another trip, and nearly twenty years before our story opens, he had married a wife, the daughter of a Sussex squire, and persuaded her to share his wandering fortunes – a step to which her family were the more willing to assent, that the young lady had but little fortune of her own. The marriage was only too happy while it lasted. To his intense grief, poor Moray lost his wife by an epidemic, just as, being reclaimed and thoroughly domesticated, he had resolved to realise his property and come home. He never ceased to regret that he had not acted on the determination a year before. As it was, he threw himself into trade pursuits more energetically than ever, sending the little daughter his wife had left him to be nursed under the wing of a grand-aunt. He was relieved to be rid of the child, yet very loath to part with it – for already it had the smile and the eyes of its mother.
With the separation, his more tender feelings had it all their own way, and thenceforward he had another attraction to England. Latterly those flying home-trips of his, if they were more brief, became more frequent, especially after the opening of the Suez Canal. He had fixed the period of his final return at the age when his daughter ought to be "coming out"; and in the meantime he knew that she was in good hands. Old Miss Venables was a soft-hearted but sensible spinster, who had missed her vocation in not marrying. Her bright little grandniece was even more of a godsend than the very handsome annuity her brother-in-law settled on her. She devoted herself to her young charge. As Grace grew up, she engaged her an excellent governess: and the three females saw a good deal of the world in a quiet way, changing their residences from Bath to Brighton, from Clifton to Scarborough; and
