“Sure, Sir Ambrose,” says she, “you an’t minded to depart so soon? And you also, Mr Waterdale; it an’t so often we see you that we can suffer you to leave us after so short a visit. Pray stay and take dinner with us, or at least eat some little lunch before you ride home.” “Madam,” said Mr Waterdale, with a mighty uncomfortable air, as Sir Ambrose had also, “you see us here on a prodigious disagreeable business, and ’twould ill beseem us to eat in your house while engaged in’t. But permit me to assure you, madam, that whatever be the issue of this affair, only the very greatest respect and kindness will be felt by all the county for yourself.” “I don’t perceive your meaning, sir,” says Dorothy, casting upon him a look that seemed to render him doubly uneasy. “Pray, why do you separate my name from Mr Carlyon’s? Whatever blame or unkindness be awarded him, whether by the county or by his near neighbours, sure I shall share the half on’t. I’ll wish you a very good day, sir, and you also, Sir Ambrose.” With that she swept into the chamber we had but just left, where, when I was returned from dismissing the gentlemen, I found her reading the paper that lay on the table. Looking up with a scared face on my entering, “What’s this, sir?” says she. “Heaven only knows,” says I, “though I fear it brings grievous trouble upon us. Let us read it together, my dearest love, for sure, as you say, it concerns us both alike.” Dorothy spread forth the letter on the table, and smoothed it out, then sitting down she did begin to read it, and I read it likewise over her shoulder. It was sufficiently long, and I verily could not forbear to marvel, as I looked upon the closeness of the writing, that he should have wrote it who most abhorred all use of pen and ink, and who had scarce been trusted at Surat even to make out an invoice correctly; but I suppose that bitter hate, like love, do lend assistance to persons in their designs.