The baronet's son speedily found a victim in the daughter of a well-to-do doctor. He represented himself to be a bachelor--of course, the truth was that his wife was still alive--anxious to marry and settle down in quiet luxury, as befitted his birth. The girl readily responded to his honeyed words, and in her father's house the engagement took place, and was approved of by the doctor, who had heard of Sir William Parsons, Bart., of Nottingham.
Parsons began to borrow. In hundreds at first and then in thousands, and very soon the girl's private fortune of three thousand pounds, which she had inherited from her mother, had been lent to Parsons, and lost by him in the gaming-houses.
Her father advanced more, and when he had drained the family dry Parsons announced that he was called away to see his father to arrange for his marriage, and he took his departure from Bath with the cordial good wishes of the doctor and his daughter, who were destined neither to see him nor their money again.
From Bath he went to Clifton. It was then a small village where a few of the wealthy Bristol merchants had country-houses. He arrived in the early summer, and speedily got an introduction to a rich shipowner who had two daughters. Parsons discovered that the two girls were wildly jealous of each other, and he thereupon made each one the object of his attentions without letting either know that she had a rival. There was plenty of money in the family, but on the first occasion Parsons delicately hinted that a loan of two hundred pounds would be acceptable the hard-headed old merchant only advised him to write to his father, offering to bear the expense of the communication.
This was not what Parsons wanted, and he determined to use the girls to extract the money from their father, whom he termed "the old miser." Accordingly, he took the elder girl out for a walk, and boldly explained that he was temporarily without means owing to a family lawsuit, and he hinted that if she wished to marry him she must help to relieve his pecuniary embarrassment. The girl promised to do her best, and, confident that she would keep her promise not to divulge to her father or sister what he had said, he met the younger girl, and put his situation before her in similar terms.