THE HAMPSTEAD MYSTERY. A NOVEL.

‘Once for all,’ exclaimed Mr Crampton, bringing down his broad fist heavily upon the table, ‘once for all, I tell you, I will not have it.’ At this terrible assertion, Mrs Crampton shivered as if she had been struck, and Aunt Clem silently dissolved into tears. Henry Hindes, of all the party, alone preserved his composure. He leaned back in his chair, carefully trimming his filbert nails with a penknife, as if the affair under discussion were not of the slightest moment.[Pg 2] ‘Of course you will not have it,’ he said after a pause to Mr Crampton, ‘no man in his senses would. Mr Frederick Walcheren has money and good looks, but there his claims to admiration end. The first you do not require for your daughter, and the second would have no weight with anyone but a woman. To place against these supposed advantages, Mr Walcheren is a young man of dissolute habits, and lavish expenditure. You should hear what his cousin, Philip Walcheren, says of him.’