"I have not. One little circumstance related to me by Mr. Hobbs, your surveyor's father, gave me some uneasiness. About two years after the young woman disappeared, a girl, of very humble dress and appearance, stopped at the gate of Hobbs' Lodge, and asked earnestly for Mr. Butler. On hearing he was gone, she turned away, and was seen no more. It seems that this girl had an infant in her arms--which rather shocked the propriety of Mr. and Mrs. Hobbs. The old gentleman told me the circumstance a few days after it happened, and I caused inquiry to be made for the stranger; but she could not be discovered. I thought at first this possibly might be the lost Alice; but I learned that, during his stay at the cottage, your friend--despite his error, which we will not stop to excuse--had exercised so generous and wide a charity amongst the poor in the town and neighbourhood, that it was a more probable supposition of the two that the girl belonged to some family he had formerly relieved, and her visit was that of a mendicant, not a mistress. Accordingly, after much consideration, I resolved not to mention the circumstances to Mr. Maltravers, when he wrote to me on his return from the Continent. A considerable time had then elapsed since the girl had applied to Mr. Hobbs; all trace of her was lost; the incident might open wounds that time must have nearly healed, might give false hopes--or, what was worse, occasion a fresh and unfounded remorse at the idea of Alice's destitution; it would, in fact, do no good, and might occasion unnecessary pain. I therefore suppressed all mention of it." "You did right: and so the poor girl had an infant in her arms?--humph! What sort of looking person was this Alice Darvil,--pretty, of course?" "I never saw her; and none but the persons employed in the premises knew her by sight; they described her as remarkably lovely." "Fair and slight, with blue eyes, I suppose?--those are the orthodox requisites of a heroine." "Upon my word I forget; indeed I should never have remembered as much as I do, if the celebrity of Mr. Maltravers, and the consequence of his family in these parts, together with the sight of his own agony--the most painful I ever witnessed--had not served to impress the whole affair very deeply on my mind." "Was the girl who appeared at the gate of Hobbs' Lodge described to you?" "No; they scarcely observed her countenance, except that her complexion was too fair for a gypsy's; yet, now I think of it, Mrs. Tiddy, who was with her father when he told me the adventure, dwelt particularly on her having (as you so pleasantly conjecture) fair hair and blue eyes. Mrs. Tiddy, being just married, was romantic at that day." "Well, it is an odd tale; but life is full of odd tales. Here we are at the house; it really is a splendid old place!" CHAPTER V. PENDENT opera interrupta.*--VIRGIL. * "The things begun are interrupted and suspended."