To hasten down to Petersham, find the cottage, refresh himself with dry sherry and soda-water at the nearest tavern, and to make himself agreeably familiar with the landlord of the tavern, was all incomparably easy to Mr. Lowther. From the landlord he heard all about Brook Cottage. How it had been to let for nearly a twelvemonth; how it had been taken all in a hurry at the end of May by a dashing-looking gentleman from town, who had been reported scouring the neighbourhood in hansom cabs, inquiring for houses to let, for three days at a stretch; how painters and glaziers, carpenters and gardeners, had set to work in hot haste to renew and revivify everything in-doors and out; how waggon-loads of the finest gravel from Wimbledon, and cartloads of the softest turf from Ham, had been laid down in the garden; how furniture, that was every bit of it new, had been brought down from London; how the tall, dashing, energetic gentleman in the hansom cab had been perpetually on the ground with his officious finger for ever in the pie; and how larger cans of half-and-half had been consumed by the workmen at the cost of the dashing gentleman than the landlord of the Prince’s Feathers remembers to have chalked up against any one customer since he had traded as a licensed victualler. All this Mr. Lowther was told; and beyond this, he heard how a lady, very pretty and quite young, but a little pale and worn-looking, had arrived at last to take possession of “the prettiest little box that was ever put together, without regard to expense;” how she was attended by an elderly female in black, who had evidently seen better days, and who acted as nurse to a little boy; how two respectable young women had been hired in the neighbourhood, to act as cook and housemaid; and how, coming regularly to the Feathers in quest of the kitchen-beer, they had already reported their mistress as the sweetest and pleasantest of ladies, and first-cousin to the dashing gentleman in the hansom cab. The landlord tried to look as if he had no uncharitable thoughts about this cousinship; but Harcourt Lowther saw that Francis Tredethlyn and the lady had been subjects of grave scandal in that quiet country place. He heard that the dashing gentleman had been at Petersham almost every day for the last week; and that he and the lady passed the greater part of their time in the garden, where they might be seen at any time from the high-road,--the gentleman smoking and playing with a little boy, and the lady working, at a rustic table, under a mulberry-tree. A pot-boy, coming in from his rounds, as Harcourt lounged at the bar, confirmed the landlord’s statement when appealed to. He had passed Brook Cottage not five minutes before, and had seen the lady and gentleman talking to a gardener, who was doing something to a rose-tree. “She’s a rare one for flowers, the lady is,” the potman said, in conclusion. A rare one for flowers: Harcourt Lowther mused gravely upon this remark.