The Hillyars and the Burtons by Henry Kingsley

ALL this time there was a Sir George Hillyar somewhere. But where? That is a question which will never be answered with any accuracy, even were it worth answering. What an utterly dissipated and utterly desperate man does with himself in London I do not know; at least, I am unacquainted with the details, and, even were I not, I should hesitate to write them down. No decent house would allow my book to lie on the drawing-room table if I dared put in a tale what one reads every day in the police-reports of the newspapers.

One thing Mr. Compton found out very easily: all his letters bore the London post-mark. Mr. Compton could not make it out. Why did he not come home? Why did he not show? Was he a defaulter, or had he made another engagement, and did n't dare to face his wife? The old man suspected the latter was the case, and there is every reason to believe that he was right.