“Poetical justice!” Sir Roland exclaimed; for his temper was always in good control, by virtue of varied humour; “this is the self-same whip wherewith I scourged little Alice, quite lately! Only I feel that I was far more just.” “Roland, you are always just. You may not be always wise, of course; but justice you have inherited from your dear father, and from me. And this is the reason why I wish to know what is the meaning of the strange reports, which almost any one, except myself, would have been sure to go into, or must have been told of long ago. Your thorough truthfulness I know. And you have no chance to mislead me now.” “I will imitate, though perhaps I cannot equal, your candour, my dear mother, by assuring you that I greatly prefer to keep my own counsel in this matter.” “Roland, is that your answer? You admit that there is something important, and you refuse to let your own mother know it!” “Excuse me, but I do not remember saying anything about ‘importance.’ I am not superstitious enough to suppose that the thing can have any importance.” “Then why should you make such a fuss about it? Really, Roland, you are sometimes very hard to understand.” “I was not aware that I had made a fuss,” Sir Roland answered, gravely; “but if I have, I will make no more. Now, my dear mother, what did you think of that extraordinary bill of Bottler’s?” “Bottler, the pigman, is a rogue,” said her ladyship, peremptorily: “his father was a rogue before him; and those things run in families. But surely you cannot suppose that this is the proper way to treat the subject.” “To my mind a most improper way--to condemn a man’s bill on the ground that his father transmitted the right to overcharge!” “Now, my dear son,” said Lady Valeria, who never called him her son at all, unless she was put out with him, and her “dear son” only when she was at the extremity of endurance--“my dear son, these are sad attempts to disguise the real truth from me. The truth I am entitled to know, and the truth I am resolved to know. And I think that you might have paid me the compliment of coming for my advice before.” Finding her in this state of mind, and being unable to deny the justice of her claim, Sir Roland was fain at last to make a virtue of necessity, while he marvelled (as so many have done) at the craft of people in spying things, and espying them always wrongly. “Is that all?” said Lady Valeria, after listening carefully; “I thought there must have been something a little better than that, to justify you in making it such a mystery. Nothing but a dusty old document, and a strange-looking package, or case like a cone! However, I do not blame you, my dear Roland, for making so small a discovery. The old astrologer appears to me to have grown a little childish. Now, as I keep to the old-fashioned hours, I will ask you to ring the bell for my tea; and while it is being prepared, you can fetch me the case itself, and the document to examine.”