"Not here. Won't you come out with me somewhere? We must be alone." "Then it must wait, Johnny. I am going round to the stables with Tamlyn. He wishes me to see the horse they have got on trial. By the description, I don't think much of him: should give him a pretty long trial before I bought him." They went out. Not long after that, I was strolling across the court-yard with Sam Jenkins, who had been despatched on some professional errand, when we saw Sir Henry Westmorland ride up and rein in his horse. He asked for Dr. Knox. Sam went back to the house to say so, while Sir Henry talked to me. "Look here," said Sir Henry to the doctor, after they had shaken hands, "I have had a curious letter from Major Leckie this morning. At least"--taking the letter from his pocket and opening it--"it contains an odd bit of news. He says--where is it?--stand still, sir,"--to the horse. "Here it is; just listen, doctor. 'Dr. Knox must have made a mistake in saying Collinson was at Lefford. Collinson is in India; has not been home at all. I have had a letter from him by the overland mail just in, asking me to do a commission for him. Tell Dr. Knox this. If the man he spoke of is passing himself off for Collinson of ours, he must be an impostor.' What do you think of that, doctor?" concluded Sir Henry, folding the letter again. "He is an impostor," replied Dr. Knox. "We found him out last night." "What a rogue! Has he been taking people in--fleecing them?" "He has taken us all in, Sir Henry, in one sense of the word; he was on the point of doing it more effectually, when he was stopped. As to fleecing people, I don't know about that. He seems to have had plenty of money at his command--whence obtained is another question." "Cheated some one out of it; rely upon that," remarked the baronet, as he nodded a good-day to us, and rode off. Mina was downstairs when we returned indoors. Anything more pitiful than her state of contrition and distress I should not care to see. No doubt the discovery, just made, tended to strengthen her repentance. In a silly girl's mind some romance might attach to the notion of an elopement with a gallant captain of consideration, brave in Her Majesty's service; but to elope with Mr. Fabian Pell, the chevalier d'industrie, was quite another affair. Mina was mild in temperament, gentle in manners, yet she might have flown at the ex-captain's face with sharp nails, had he come in her way. "I did not really like him," she sobbed forth: and there was no doubt that she spoke truth. "But they were always on at me, persuading me; they never let me alone." "Who persuaded you, my dear?" asked Janet.