I often called in at the confectioner's, and was gratified to find that Mary's modest propriety of behavior, in a somewhat difficult position, had gained her the goodwill of her employers, who invariably spoke of her with kindness and respect. Nevertheless, the cark and care of a London life, with its incessant employment and late hours, soon, I perceived, began to tell upon her health and spirits; and it was consequently with a strong emotion of pleasure I heard from my wife that she had seen a passage in a letter from Mary's mother, to the effect that the elder Westlake was betraying symptoms of yielding to the angry and passionate expostulations of his only son, relative to the enforced breaking off of his engagement with Mary Kingsford. The blush with which she presented the letter was, I was told, very eloquent. One evening, on passing Morris's shop, I observed Hartley and Simpson there. They were swallowing custards and other confectionary with much gusto; and, from their new and costly habiliments, seemed to be in surprisingly good case. They were smirking and smiling at the cousins with rude confidence; and Sophia Clarke, I was grieved to see, repaid their insulting impertinence by her most elaborate smiles and graces. I passed on; and presently meeting with a brother-detective, who, it struck me, might know something of the two gentlemen, I turned back with him, and pointed them out. A glance sufficed him. "Hartley and Simpson you say?" he remarked after we had walked away to some distance: "those are only two of their numerous _aliases_. I can not, however, say that I am as yet on very familiar terms with them; but as I am especially directed to cultivate their acquaintance, there is no doubt we shall be more intimate with each other before long. Gamblers, blacklegs, swindlers I already know them to be; and I would take odds they are not unfrequently something more, especially when fortune and the bones run cross with them." "They appear to be in high feather just now," I remarked. "Yes: they are connected, I suspect, with the gang who cleaned out young Garslade last week in Jermyn-street. I'd lay a trifle," added my friend, as I turned to leave him, "that one or both of them will wear the Queen's livery, gray turned up with yellow, before many weeks are past. Good-by."