Henry Dunbar

Henry Dunbar opens in the polished darkness of a great London banking house, where wealth, secrecy, and buried guilt lie just beneath the surface of respectability. When the long-absent head of the firm prepares to return from India after thirty-five years, the novel gathers a cast of lives already marked by his past: the practical Mr. Balderby, the anxious old clerk Sampson Wilmot, and the quiet cashier Clement Austin. Through Sampson's painful recollections, the story reveals Dunbar's reckless youth, his gambling debts, and the forged bill that saved his honor while destroying others, especially Joseph Wilmot, the servant drawn into the fraud and ruined by its aftermath. Forced into exile and labor in India, Henry eventually becomes manager of the branch there, marries, and fathers Laura, now raised in England under Percival Dunbar's care. As his return approaches, old loyalties and old fears surface again. At the same time, the novel widens to include Margaret Wentworth, living in poverty with her charming but unreliable father, and Major Vernon, a shadowy figure whose approach to Dunbar turns a hidden murder into a source of blackmail. Against this backdrop of inheritance, sacrifice, and revenge, Laura's restrained wedding to Arthur Lovell and Arthur's decision to remain in England deepen the emotional cost of the past. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.