"About the canal?" repeated Mr. Beaufort. "No, sir, no! You parliament gentlemen must hauve a vaust deal of trouble on your haunds--very foine property I understaund yours is, sir. Sir, allow me to drink the health of your good lady!" "I thank you, Mr.--, Mr.--, what did you say your name was?--I beg you a thousand pardons." "No offaunce in the least, sir; no ceremony with me--this is perticler good madeira!" "May I ask how I can serve you?" said Mr. Beaufort, struggling between the sense of annoyance and the fear to be uncivil. "And pray, had I the honour of your vote in the last election!" "No, sir, no! It's mauny years since I have been in your part of the world, though I was born there." "Then I don't exactly see--" began Mr. Beaufort, and stopped with dignity. "Why I call on you," put in the stranger, tapping his boots with his cane; and then recognising the rents, he thrust both feet under the table. "I don't say that; but at this hour I am seldom at leisure--not but what I am always at the service of a constituent, that is, a voter! Mr.--, I beg your pardon, I did not catch your name." "Sir," said the stranger, helping himself to a third glass of wine; "here's a health to your young folk! And now to business." Here the visitor, drawing his chair nearer to his host, assuming a more grave aspect, and dropping something of his stilted pronunciation, continued, "You had a brother?" "Well, sir," said Mr. Beaufort, with a very changed countenance. "And that brother had a wife!" Had a cannon gone off in the ear of Mr. Robert Beaufort, it could not have shocked or stunned him more than that simple word with which his companion closed his sentence. He fell back in his chair--his lips apart, his eyes fixed on the stranger. He sought to speak, but his tongue clove to his mouth. "That wife had two sons, born in wedlock!" "It is false!" cried Mr. Beaufort, finding a voice at length, and springing to his feet. "And who are you, sir? and what do you mean by--" "Hush!" said the stranger, perfectly unconcerned, and regaining the dignity of his haw-haw enunciation, "better not let the servants hear aunything. For my pawt, I think servants hauve the longest pair of ears of auny persons, not excepting jauckasses; their ears stretch from the pauntry to the parlour. Hush, sir!--perticler good madeira, this!" "Sir!" said Mr. Beaufort, struggling to preserve, or rather recover, his temper, "your conduct is exceedingly strange; but allow me to say that you are wholly misinformed. My brother never did marry; and if you have anything to say on behalf of those young men--his natural sons--I refer you to my solicitor, Mr. Blackwell, of Lincoln's Inn. I wish you a good evening."