When therefore her father proposed taking up his abode at Smatterton, and hiring for that purpose the parsonage-house, she altogether forgot its vicinity to Neverden and its association with the name of Darnley, and she was delighted with the prospect of going back again to those scenes with which her mind connected images of pleasure and recollections of peace. It was with ready and delightful acquiescence that Penelope assented to the proposal; and as Mr Primrose saw that his child was pleased with the thought of going to reside at Smatterton, he hastened to put his intentions into execution; and at the very time that Lord Spoonbill was grumbling about his right to marry whomsoever he pleased, Mr Primrose was making arrangements to leave London. The father of Penelope was not slow in his movements, and he was not in the habit of giving his purposes time to cool. He wrote by that evening's post to Smatterton, and at an early hour on the following morning he and his daughter commenced their journey. So that when Lord Spoonbill, who heeded not his father's long lecture on the subject of dignity, called again at Mr Primrose's hotel, and heard that the gentleman and his daughter were gone, and that they were gone to Smatterton, then his lordship was grieved beyond measure, and his perplexity was serious, and his fears rose within him: for he took it for granted that there must soon be an interview and an explanation, and then he distrusted Nick Muggins, and there rose up before his mind's eye the phantom of that ungainly cub and his clumsy pony: that image which, in the recollection of most who had seen it, would excite a smile at its uncouthness, was to the Right Honorable Lord Spoonbill productive of very painful emotions and disagreeable apprehensions. So his lordship thought himself the most unfortunate creature in the world. Then again there was in his lordship's possession the letter from Robert Darnley to Mr Primrose, and his lordship hardly knew what to do with that. He thought that the secret of his having already detained it for a whole day must inevitably transpire. Whether he should send it or detain it would be equally ruinous to his schemes. He looked very thoughtfully at the letter, and at length resolved to send it with an explanation to Mr Primrose at Smatterton. He thought that, if there should be on the letter any symptoms of curious or prying fingers, it might be attributed to any one rather than to his lordship; and he thought that, at the worst, no one would explicitly charge him with an attempt to penetrate into its secresy. The letter was therefore despatched with an apology for its detention as much like a lie as anything that a lord could write.