The agonizing particulars of the Viscount’s final days, and his moral ruin, were administered further proof when a pawn shop in Dean Street was discovered to possess the Viscount’s watch-fob and chain, which, as they had been given to him by Lord Hallendale’s father, were amongst his most treasured possessions. Mr. Gardiner had generously redeemed the articles, presenting them to Colonel Fitzwilliam in memory of his brother, a small consolation and fitting conclusion to the end of a life at once so promising, and ultimately so wasted.

However, the sordid picture of the Viscount’s last days was not yet complete: he was found to have been living away from the Hallendales’ London house in an effort to conceal his movements and his whereabouts—living with a woman! The woman was believed to have been introduced to Dunfield some months before by a Mr. Tom Bertram of Northamptonshire, the heir to a baronetcy. She was, it was presumed by the Bow Street superior, Bertram’s former mistress. At some point previous, Mr. Bertram had contracted a serious illness and was despaired of for many weeks, the recovery from which had led to the renunciation of all of his former habits of dissipation, including his liaison with the lady. She had then, it appeared, transferred her hopes, if not her affections, to Bertram’s former friend and ally in their joint profligacy, Viscount Dunfield. She had gone so far as to shelter Dunfield until he had either wearied of her, or—if it were possible to construct a creditable story in such circumstances—may actually have broken off the affair in a noble, if futile, attempt to save her from being implicated in his own certain ruination. He had given the lady her congé in the last days of his attendance at White’s, a circumstance related to the officer by several of the Viscount’s former associates. The lady was no longer at her London residence, nor could she be found at her brother’s Northamptonshire estate. No successful effort had been made to trace her further until, to his horror, Colonel Fitzwilliam found himself giving the Bow Street regular information on the last-known whereabouts of Miss Mary Crawford.