“Well, old fellow, and how are you? Bills brought you up express, I see; thought nothing short of them could get me a speedy sight of you. I did not want you about them at all, you know, really, for I could have sent you the renewals to sign by post as easily as not. Yes, we must renew. I have such a devil of a lot of things on hand at the present time—good things, but still all crying out for money. Well, and how are you? and your charming lady, and my friend Lally, you know? Poor little cricket! I was deucedly sorry to hear of her being so ill; and oh! isn’t that a business about Ormson’s daughter! By Jove! the old man is cut up, and no mistake. Mrs. O. takes it better than he—comes the Roman matron and that sort of thing; think I liked her quite as well before I heard her declaiming against the girl. Mrs. Black believes her sister forced Bessie to accept Harcourt against her will, and led her a nice life at home over it. I always considered Mrs. O. a very superior sort of woman; but I suppose God who made it is the only one who rightly understands female nature. It is an enigma to me. Who’s she off with, Squire? Come, it is all in the family, and you need not keep the matter dark here.” “I have not the remotest idea,” answered Arthur. “No one seems able to give the slightest clue. She must have been a sly, deep girl to make a flight like that. She bribed one of the servants, went down the back staircase, out across the farm-yard, away along the field avenue, and so into Berrie Down Lane, where her lover, it appears, was waiting for her.” “She was a very pretty girl, Dudley,” said Mr. Black, meditatively, speaking of her beauty already in the past tense. “I never saw anything so particularly wonderful about her,” answered Arthur, coolly.