At twilight, Mr. Brownlow gets out of a coach at his door. Two husky men with him usher a fourth passenger into the house. The reluctant member of the group is Monks. At the door of a back room, Monks balks and Brownlow delivers an ultimatum. So far, Monks has agreed to be picked up and brought to the house. Brownlow gives him the choice of cooperating or being turned loose to be dealt with by the law "on a charge of fraud and robbery."
At his wits' end, Monks has no plan. "Is there — no middle course?" Brownlow sternly replies that there are no other alternatives, nor time for deliberation. Monks enters the room, and his host instructs the escorts to lock the door from the outside and to wait until he rings for them.
When they are alone, Monks recovers enough to complain to Brownlow: "This is pretty treatment, sir, from my father's oldest friend." The old gentleman answers that it is his friendship for Monks's father that moves him to give Monks a break. When Monks's father was still a boy, his only sister — the girl Brownlow was about to marry — died. From that time on, Brownlow was attached to his lost fiancée's brother, until he too died. Brownlow concludes these impassioned introductory remarks by pronouncing Monks's real name — Edward Leeford.
Interrupted by occasional complaints and weak denials from Monks, Mr. Brownlow spells out the past history of the present problems. Brownlow's friend, when only a boy, was thrust into marriage by family pride, "the most sordid and narrowest of all ambition." The union resulted in one offspring — Monks. The couple progressed from mutual indifference to intense hatred and ultimately separated. The woman went to the continent and forgot her immature husband, who was ten years younger than she.
