"I'm an honest man, Mrs. Cornbury," said the brewer, "and I like to speak out my mind openly. Mr. Hart is a liberal, and I mean to support my party. Will you tell Mr. Cornbury so with my compliments? It's all nonsense about Jews not being in Parliament. It's not the same as being mayors or churchwardens, or anything like that. I shall vote for Mr. Hart; and, what's more, we shall put him in." "And Mrs. Cornbury, if you have so much regard for Miss Rachel, you'd better advise her to think no more of that young man. He's no good; he's not indeed. If you ask, you'll find he's in debt everywhere." "Swindler!" said Tappitt. "I don't suppose it can be very bad with Miss Rachel yet, for she only saw him about three times,--though she was so intimate with him at our party." Mrs. Butler Cornbury curtseyed and smiled, and got herself out of the room. Mrs. Tappitt, as soon as she remembered herself, rang the bell, and Mr. Tappitt, following her down to the hall door, went through the pretence of putting her into her carriage. "She's a nasty meddlesome woman," said Tappitt, as soon as he got back to his wife. "And how ever she can stand up and say all those things for that girl, passes me!" said Mrs. Tappitt, holding up both her hands. "She was flighty herself, when young; she was, no doubt; and now I suppose she likes others to be the same. If that's what she calls manners, I shouldn't like her to take my girls about." "And him a gentleman!" said Tappitt. "If those are to be our gentlemen I'd sooner have all the Jews out of Jerusalem. But they'll find out their gentleman; they'll find him out! He'll rob that old mother of his before he's done; you mark my words else." Comforting himself with this hope he took himself back to his counting-house. Mrs. Cornbury had smiled as she went, and had carried herself through the whole interview without any sign of temper. Even when declaring that she intended to take Rachel's part open-mouthed, she had spoken in a half-drolling way which had divested her words of any tone of offence. But when she got into her carriage, she was in truth very angry. "I don't believe a word of it," she said to herself; "not a word of it." That in which she professed to herself her own disbelief was the general assertion that Rowan was a swindler, supported by the particular assertion that he had left Baslehurst over head and ears in debt. "I don't believe it." And she resolved that it should be her business to find out whether the accusation were true or false. She knew the ins and outs of Baslehurst life and Baslehurst doings with tolerable accuracy, and was at any rate capable of unravelling such a mystery as that. If the Tappitts in their jealousy were striving to rob Rachel Ray of her husband by spreading false reports, she would encourage Rachel Ray in her love by spreading the truth;--if, as she believed, the truth should speak in Rowan's favour. She would have considerable pleasure in countermining Mr. and Mrs. Tappitt.