The arrangements and preparations for the intended marriage, though conducted with privacy, yet were not so secret as to escape the notice of the Countess of Cockatrice, who, for the various reasons which we have before stated, was extremely inimical to an affiance that interfered so much with her own wishes and views. She suspected that the plan, of which, Mrs. Dicky had been the instrument, was unsuccessful; her lowly minister had been received with extreme coldness, in subsequent visits to Miss Mortimer; and on being officious and impertinent in her inquiries, had been refused admittance. The Countess having no means of intercourse with Miss Mortimer, nearly despaired of effecting a breach between the lovers; but her invention being extremely ready, especially where mischief was the object, she conceived a project which she thought very feasible. There was a person, that having published several obscene and slanderous productions, took to himself the name of a bookseller. This fellow (whose name was Blackball) was peculiarly distinguished for what was some years ago denominated by the cant term of _ink-making_, that is, threatening to publish defamation, unless he was paid for concealment, an employment, in point of turpitude and infamy, analogous to the practice of that class of highway-robberies which extorts money by threatened charges of flagitious criminality; but not like these, subjecting the perpetrator to the gallows. The first in the calumnious line, Blackball, was in some request in the fashionable world, and well known to the Countess: To him she applied in the present case, and instructed him to hunt for anecdotes concerning Hamilton and also Miss Mortimer. The countess learned that Maria had, about three years before, been for some months a parlour boarder at a respectable school in a village in which there was another much less respectable, and which about that time had been the subject of some discussion, on account of an adventure of one of the young ladies and a Frenchman: Blackball had heard the particulars from a young teacher, an intimate friend of his, that used to convey to the misses of the boarding-school such books and pictures as he was in the habit of collecting and vending; and for which the seminary in question afforded a sure and rapid sale. The story, it seems, had been hushed, and Blackball having been paid for secrecy, and also afraid if he published any thing on the subject, it might interfere with his custom, had adhered to taciturnity. On hearing the village mentioned, calling the circumstance to mind, he said, that he thought it would be no very difficult matter to confound the two schools, and attach the report in question to Miss Mortimer.--“Suppose, please your ladyship, we were to revive that story by a few smart paragraphs in the newspapers?” “How would you manage to introduce so old a story?” “Oh very easily!” said the other; “give it first as new, then acknowledge