“‘Ho, Miss,’ says I, ‘your taste lies in the dark line,’ says I. ‘That’s no surprise to me you bold hussy!’ And then, my Lady, you’ll never believe it, she regular insulted me. “‘Well,’ she says, ‘and if I do prefer a dark gentleman, ain’t a body free to have their fancy? There’s you,’ she says, ‘as likes them fat and cat-footed, with a wheeze and a paunch,’ referring, my Lady, to the attentions Mr. Blandfoot is paying me. And then I answers her back: “‘I’m sure, you wicked girl, if Mr. Blandfoot and I ever agree to settle, it’ll be as man and wife, respectable _and_ respected.’” “‘Why, lud, aunt,’ she says, ‘you have a nasty mind.’ And more than that, my Lady, I couldn’t get out of her, it being her busy time. And--oh, dear, to be sure!--was there ever such a desperate bit of work? Her getting on so well, fought over by the ladies, I may say!” Lady Kilcroney allowed the lamentations to continue without interruption for some time, her own thoughts being concentrated on the painful problem. The more she reflected upon it, the more, alas! she began to believe in the story. Old Bellairs’s nephew was a sad dog--a handsome, plausible, dashing, insidious rascal--she knew that. And that he had pursued Pamela with his attentions, she was also aware. The girl’s attitude of defiance could hardly go with innocence, and there was that strange story about the debt. Now, Kitty liked Pamela, and she had a certain sympathy, too, with a spirit that refused to humiliate itself on a question of private conduct. “I trust no one has ever been able to say of me that I am otherwise than strictly virtuous,” she thought, “but I can’t abide these prying prudes that think ’tis their business to show up any poor child that’s made a slip in her time.” “And, ho, my Lady,” concluded Lydia, “they’ve kept it from Madame Mirabel, on condition that my niece resigns her situation.” “Now, look here, Lydia, stop sniffing. If ’tis my poor dear Bellairs’s nephew that wronged the girl, I’ll see that he makes reparation. He shall marry her. Leave it to me. Leave it to me, I say! I’ll have the truth out of them both, and then I’ll join their hands, I swear it, before I’m two days older!” Kitty was one of those whose plans are swiftly conceived and whose impatient spirit will not brook an instant’s delay in their execution. She sat down that very moment to write to her graceless relative. “He must not guess,” she thought, as her quill ran with little squeaks and pauses--“he must not guess that he is to be brought to book, or my young gentleman will have a thousand good reasons for declining to present himself.” “_Dear Nephew Jocelyn_,” wrote she, very silkily--“_Pray come and visit me this next Thursday afternoon at three of the clock. It is a long time since we have met, and there is a little matter----_” Here Kitty stopped and nibbled at her pen. How could she bait the trap so that the fox should fall into it?